Books Become Dating Currency: How Literary Taste Shapes Modern Romance
The thrill of spotting someone who loves the same novel as you can feel like fate, a serendipitous connection in the digital dating landscape. This phenomenon is accelerating as books increasingly function as cultural shorthand for personality, taste, and worldview on dating platforms.
The Data: Reading Mentions Surge on Dating Apps
Platform data reveals a significant trend: mentions of reading in Tinder bios in the UK have increased by 29% overall in the last year, with a striking 41% rise among women. On the dating app Feeld, approximately 7% of UK profiles explicitly mention reading, and users who connect with other readers are almost 10% more likely to report a meaningful connection. Hinge reports that book is one of the most frequent words shared globally in responses to the prompt My simple pleasures.
Further research from freelancer platform 99designs shows that 42% of Americans desire a partner who reads regularly, and 38% find profiles mentioning books more attractive. Books are performing heavy lifting in the dating economy, serving as quick signals in an attention economy that rewards speed.
Personal Stories: From Green Flags to Red Flags
Daters like 29-year-old Ayo* exemplify this blunt approach. One of my Hinge prompts is: 'What's the best book you read this year?' and I swipe left on anyone who says a book I don't like, she says. Someone once replied with a book by Jordan Peterson, which was a massive ick. Ayo prefers contemporary literary fiction or classics, citing authors like Ben Lerner, Sheila Heti, and Annie Ernaux as impressive matches.
Others describe similar experiences. Caitlin, 25, recalls a university situationship with a man who ran a Ulysses book group, which she found off-putting. Later, she was initially thrilled to see Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own on a man's bookshelf, viewing it as a green flag for feminist sensibilities, only to discover he just turned out to be terrible, too.
Ella* had a Ben Lerner prompt on Hinge for six months, hoping for a perfect match, but the resulting date was disappointing—just a lawyer who lectured me on Tarkovsky. Harry's* worst date involved someone who claimed to be writing a book but admitted to completing an English literature degree without reading a single book.
Expert Insights: The Appeal and Risks of Literary Signalling
Luke Brunning, a philosophy lecturer at the University of Leeds and co-director of its Centre for Love, Sex and Relationships, explains the appeal: The excitement of seeing someone who enjoys the niche book you love can be real, abiding and tell us something about their taste and character.
Erinne Paisley, a researcher studying digital intimacy at the University of Copenhagen, adds that in an age of anxiety, these signals offer a connection to safety, helping daters piece together fragmented online identities.
However, experts warn of significant risks. Books have become both a badge of authenticity and a performance, leading to tensions between actual taste and strategic signalling. This maps onto the performative men discourse, where some may curate feminist or literary tastes as dating strategies rather than authentic beliefs.
Potential Pitfalls: Classism and Consumerism in Dating
Brunning highlights classism as a major risk: There can be many reasons why some people cannot read, read less than us, read different material to us, or are hesitant to disclose their reading habits. We should be careful not to let our prejudices exclude these people as potential partners.
Paisley worries that dating is turning into a consumer exercise, where people are discarded for minor taste mismatches rather than engaged as complex individuals. Red flag discourse can be helpful when referring to dangerous or harmful behaviour, but it also can be harmful in that it encourages us to find a partner who ticks every box, she says. This isn't how relationships always work. Think about friendships—there will be times of growth and negotiation.
Dating shortcuts risk flattening people into types. A love of airport novels doesn't preclude emotional depth, just as a shelf of modernist doorstoppers doesn't guarantee it. If books have become dating shorthand, they should be taken as a rough translation at best, not a definitive guide to compatibility.
*Some names have been changed.
