You Should Go on a Bookstore Date

Note: I don’t go into details about dates on this blog. Except for the really, really, really, really bad ones (yes, those are four different links). And even those I wait for months to share. On today’s entry, I’m going to talk about a recent date, but only in the context of this date as a great date idea. This is not a commentary on the actual date or the woman with whom I went on the date. Disclaimer over.

About a year and a half ago, I wrote a blog entry listing 5 unique date ideas. I must admit that I haven’t actually tried all of these ideas. In fact, as of last week, the only one I had tried was “Cook dinner for someone, and in true Top Chef fashion, require that they bring a secret ingredient that you have to incorporate into the meal.”

However, I’ve been wanting to try one of the dates for quite some time: “Go to a bookstore.” I like dates where there’s a built-in conversation topic, and at a bookstore there are literally thousands of them.

So I finally got to go on my bookstore date last week. I realized during the date that it might be one of the best possible date concepts (for single people, people in a relationship, or even married couples), and you should definitely give it a try for the following reasons:

1. You can learn so much about the other person. First, you can figure out pretty quickly if the other person loves books as much as you do. If they do, you can learn so much about the way their mind works (or worked, as a kid) thanks to the books they read. You can also talk about firsts–first book you read, first grown-up book you read, first book that turned you on, etc. Not only that, but you can learn about how the person interacts with people–do they lead you through the bookstore or do they follow you? Are they considerate of strangers in the store? Do they ask for recommendations from the staff?
2. Book covers make for delightful conversation. These days, book covers are reduced to thumbnails on Amazon, quick and easy ways for us to identify books as we peruse the millions of options online. However, in person, walking through the rows of featured books is like walking through an art museum. Except better, because there are books behind these paintings.
3. Lots of potential for flirtation. Flirtation is so important on dates. Every date is a way to build and explore the chemistry between the two people. In a bookstore, there are many opportunities for innocuous physical flirtation–a touch on the elbow here, a guide on the small of the back there, a tuck of the hair at the right moment, perhaps even a stolen kiss behind the stacks–as well as verbal flirtation. For example, on my date I jokingly pulled a copy of 50 Shades of Grey off the shelf, randomly picked a page and a paragraph, and dared my date to read it out loud. Harmless fun for everyone.
4. When in doubt, play the guessing game. I don’t even know how to categorize this, but we ended up guessing a lot of things. We’d pick a thick book off the shelf and both try to guess the pagecount. We did the same for price. Sometimes you need little games to fill the pauses–after all, at a bookstore you’re not talking constantly since you’re reading book flaps and reading random pages.
5. You both walk away with a BOOK. Or, in my case, two books. I mostly go on drink dates, and, if things progress, dinner dates. I love food, and it’s great to walk away having eaten something new and delicious. But all you have is the memory of food from that point on. On a bookstore date, you both get to walk away with a permanent memento of the date (as the instigator of the date, I paid). I took photos of the books I was interested in as we walked–see above for the five from which I chose.

Have you ever gone on a bookstore date or a date with similar merits? Tell me about it.