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Dear Thursday: Get Your Mac(colm Gladwell) On

malcolmgladwell2So according to Gawker and some romance expert called “The Don,” reading Malcolm Gladwell just might help guys pull chicks. In fact, The Don, is fairly certain that Malcolm Gladwell himself would do great with women. Apparently the magic of Gladwell’s books is that they make otherwise vacuous people seem halfway smart.

Now, I myself definitely noticed an uptick in the quality of men I was dating after I started listening to NPR and reading the NYT again regularly, but I would argue that reading in general doesn’t get the credit it deserves for upping your dating game. People who read books regularly and keep on top of the news generally can speak authoritatively enough about a wide variety of subjects and in my opin, they’re much more fun at dinner parties.

In fact, it’s been my experience that NOT READING is more of a social inhibitor than reading.

I’ll never forget going on a date with a philosophy professor when I first got to California. I had just come off a 2-year diet of mostly plays and movie scripts. I had fallen out of the habit of reading the newspaper, and I hadn’t discovered NPR. The date was disastrous. He was a great guy, but every time he brought up a subject that wasn’t movie or play-based, I had nothing to say. Abu Ghraib? Who’s he? No, I hadn’t heard of that great indie band. Really? John Kerry is thinking of running for president? Is he like a governor or something? It was terrible. But the thing was, he was able to keep the conversation going, b/c he knew enough about a wide variety of subjects to keep us both entertained for the minimum half-hour that we had to put up with each other over coffee.

After that, I vowed that I would always be the professor on dates and never again, the uninformed girl who didn’t know who John Kerry was. Some people wash their cars before a date, I read the New York Times. And I never had an awkward first date again — which is impressive, b/c I had quite a few first dates before I found CH.

Even though I’m married now, I still make it a point to at least read the newspaper (online) and listen to NPR everyday. And so far, I still haven’t run out of things to talk about. So yes, I agree that would-be-daters could probably benefit from reading Malcolm Gladwell — or anything for that matter. After all, reading is the only free way to be smart.