Today’s New York Times Book Review has a wonderful piece on (in)compatability of reading tastes and its effects on love that hits home with me.  I read mostly science fiction, fantasy and, increasingly, young adult sf and fantasy; my wife can’t stand any of the above (although she’s a big Karen Joy Fowler fan). Luckily, I’ve married a woman who doesn’t rank my taste in literature; she just likes sitting on the couch next to me while we’re both reading. 

In the piece, a woman breaking up with a man tells her friend he didn’t know who Pushkin was: “Anyone who cares about books has at some point confronted the Pushkin problem: when a missed — or misguided — literary reference makes it chillingly clear that a romance is going nowhere fast.”

Let’s face it — this may be a gender issue. Brainy women are probably more sensitive to literary deal breakers than are brainy men. (Rare is the guy who’d throw a pretty girl out of bed for revealing her imperfect taste in books.) After all, women read more, especially when it comes to fiction. “It’s really great if you find a guy that reads, period,” said Beverly West, an author of “Bibliotherapy: The Girl’s Guide to Books for Every Phase of Our Lives.” Jessa Crispin, a blogger at the literary site Bookslut.com, agrees. “Most of my friends and men in my life are nonreaders,” she said, but “now that you mention it, if I went over to a man’s house and there were those books about life’s lessons learned from dogs, I would probably keep my clothes on.”

Still, to some reading men, literary taste does matter. “I’ve broken up with girls saying, ‘She doesn’t read, we had nothing to talk about,’” said Christian Lorentzen, an editor at Harper’s. Lorentzen recalls giving one girlfriend Nabokov’s “Ada” — since it’s “funny and long and very heterosexual, even though I guess incest is at its core.” The relationship didn’t last, but now, he added, “I think it’s on her Friendster profile as her favorite book.”

Maybe it’s just a New York thing, but it seems pretty silly to me.  After all, it’s not like we’re both sitting there reading aloud, right? 

 Oh, and speaking of Karen Fowler, her latest, Wit’s End, comes out this week.  Her website has her on the road for two weeks solid starting last evening, with events in Sacramento and Davis before heading cross-country.