What Your Bookshelf Says About You To A Date

Editor’s note: All this week, we’ll be sharing the year’s most-loved posts with you once again. This post was originally published in June.

There’s a great and very important moment in every relationship — and Kindle be damned, it’ll stay that way — when you bring a guy or girl to your place for the first time…and they peruse your bookshelf.

Are they judging you based on what they see? Yes — oh yes. And what will your books tell them about you? These generalizations will explain all:

David Sedaris, David Rakoff, and Sarah Vowell: You’re probably witty, you definitely lean left, and you’re likely to own a few tote bags.

Lots of Chuck Palahniuk: You’re into some kink.

Multiple John Grisham’s: You’re enjoyable enough, but kinda repetitive and you probably have a boring name.

Alice Munro and Raymond Carver: You’re quiet by nature, but intriguing if people take the time to get to know you.

Battered copies of Lord of the Rings and/or Chronicles of Narnia: You enjoy afternoons drifting off to other worlds, and have bouts of social awkwardness. You’re a total freak in bed.

Prominently featured first-edition philosophy collection: Pretentious alert!

Well-worn Austen and Bronte: You think men aren’t what they used to be. If you’re a dude, you’re trying to impress the ladies.

Unadorned stack of Hemingway: You can handle your liquor, and you’re almost definitely a good lay.

Some combination of David Foster Wallace, Nick Hornby, and Salinger: You’re at least a *touch* neurotic.

Bukowski, Hunter S. Thompson, Dorothy Parker: You buck authority; long-term commitment with you is totally risky.

Flannery O’Connor, Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy: You get moody and dark after sex.

Any four of the following: Da Vinci Code, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Eat Pray Love, My Sister’s Keeper, The Hunger Games, The Kite Runner: You go with the trends. Or you mostly buy books in airports.