Sunday, Feb. 11, 2007

First Date Turn-Off Books


Over at 50 books, there's a little sharing circle going on, where the question posed is: "what books WOULD turn me off a guy if he were to give them to me?". (And you can always change 'guy' to 'girl', if you're so inclined.)

And it got me thinking. I don't think I've ever gotten a book from a guy when we were courting -- it was either after we were already established as a couple and he either knew what I wanted or I told him what I wanted, or he'd give me stuff other than books. So, I started pondering the books out in the world that would be guaranteed dealbreakers if given in the early stages of a relationship, and this is what I came up with:

Anything by Joseph Conrad -- I HATED Heart of Darkness the first three times I had to read the damn thing for high school and college comparative lit. classes. So, it's not like I only gave it one chance -- I gave it three, over four years. Three strikes, and you're out, buddy. HATE that book. And so, anything else by Conrad is also suspect, just by association.

Lady Chatterly's Lover, anything by Nancy Friday or anything by Anais Nin -- A guy, giving me any of these, on a first, second, third date? Creepy. And weird. And a sure-fire way to make sure I lose his phone number. I mean, really. Ew. Is he hoping that I'm really, really susceptible to the power of suggestion? Is this the text version of "Hey, let's just put this porno movie in the DVD player and SEE WHAT HAPPENS."? Gah. Now I've squicked my own self out, and need to go pour bleach in my ear to get rid of some of those images.

The Rules, or any other sort of relationship manual -- This one's also pretty self-explanatory. While in the first blush of attraction and companionship, one of the last things I need is my guy handing me tomes on how to be with him, if he's being serious, or how not to be with him, if it's some kind of misguided joke gift. You know what I mean? Like, he's all, "Here's a copy of The Rules, ha ha, snort, aren't I just hilarious." Which, no, you're not, you're a moron. If you want to TALK, about where things are going and where you'd like them to go, talking is totally encouraged. Handing down books from the mountaintop like memos from the boss's office? Not so much, chief. Maybe you should have saved your $24.95 and bought a copy of Why I'm Still Single and Living in a Single-Wide on the Back of my Mom's Property instead.

Anything by Stephen King, Robert McCammon, Dean Koontz, or any other horror authors

Giving a woman you barely know a book about serial killers or dismembered bodies or crazy, knife-wielding psychos? Not a good idea, at least in my opinion. I'd have to know someone pretty damn well before I'd give them a copy of Swan Song or The Shining. Part of the problem with giving books to people, in general, is that assumptions are made about what the recipient might like. I'm pretty sure I don't want to be dating a guy who apparently looked at me and thought, "Hm. She looks like she might like books about torture, rape and death by knifing." And furthermore, women who are wading in the dating pool, hip deep in 48763874 kinds of wrong men and looking for that one right one, have enough to worry about without wondering how many times her date has read Cujo.

Clearly political or religious books

My blind date hands me a copy of Rush Limbaugh's first book, or a copy of the Holy Bible? We've just catapulted to a different realm. Not that I'm saying that people who read either of those books are irrevocably weird, but the idea that my date, without knowing me, would give me something so staunchly political or so obviously religious? What's that message sound like to you? To me, it sounds like, "These are my beliefs, and they'd better be yours, too." Which, yeah, it's kind of nice to know on the first date that the guy's a Republican so that you can either go with that or run screaming from the room -- it just seems a little too much "my way or the highway" for me.

I think pretty much anything else is okay, or at least won't see me dismissing him out of hand. If he gave me a cookbook, or a coffee table book about teapots, or a thesaurus, I'd probably arch an eyebrow, but I wouldn't think he was a nutbar with extra nuts, necessarily. But if I see anything that remotely looks like it's got Joseph Conrad's name on it, dude just better forget that I ever existed.


saturncat at 11:05 p.m.

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