Listen up all you single people out there, if this post on a Guardian blog is correct, you too can attract a suitable boy/girl by reading the right kind of book in public, such as on the subway, on the bus, in a park, in a cafe etc. Now I am not much of a cafe person, and prefer to do most of my reading in bed, standing at a tall desk, and occasionally in the smallest room of the house. And the only time I chatted up a young lady reading, she was holding Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude", and I think she prefered to be left with her solitude. You can read similar stories of others in the comments section of that post; here is a sampling:

"If I ever bumped into a young lady reading a David Foster Wallace novel, I'd do my best to disregard my lack of physical appeal while turning up the charm and attempting the seduction of my life. Unfortunately I think there's more chance of bumping into a singing Daschund belting out an uncanny version of Bohemian Rhapsody."

"In the US, "Christian fiction" about the coming rapture/apocalypse is quite popular -- seeing someone reading that doesn't just turn me off, it scares me."

"I was clocked reading Geek Love by an attractive girl on the tube the other day. She asked me what it was about, and I told her: a circus family experiment with drug and radioisotope cocktails to breed their own freak show. She went strangely silent, turned away, and started talking to her friend on the other side."

"- A DIY manual - this guy's already hitched and a home-maker. No chance

• Shakespeare's complete works. You'd never be short of conversation."

...

So maybe it is time for me again to appear in public, hefting Tolstoy's "War & Peace" or Dante's "Inferno". To rephrase an Apache Indian song "Arranged Marriage":

"Me wan gal say a soni kudi Me wan gal that say she read wif me"

Also any ladies, reading this post, please give me your suggestions as to what would work best?

...

A related link derged up decause of comments: this witty NYT essay titled "You Can't Get a Man With a Pen".

Haha.. Yes, it would definitely work on me. Actually, it HAS worked on me, more than a few times.

I have always looked twice (or more) at men reading Pramoedya Anant Toer, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or any of the other Latin American greats. On trains, at bookshops, in cafes, wherever.

The book catches my eye, and can't help but check out who's reading it.

This is like saying that we can attract the right partner on the internet by having the perfect blog, isn't it?

Hasn't happened to me so far - either the perfect blog or the perfect partner attracted by it. :-)