Liking These Books Decreases the Likelihood of Getting a Date

Books that get you dates
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Online dating can be hard. It sometimes feels like there's a secret code no one told you about. A new study from eHarmony has decoded a piece of it. The answer: Read books.

It turns out men who list reading as an interest on the dating site receive 19 percent more messages than men who don't. For women, it's just a three percent bump, but a bump nonetheless.

Unsurprisingly, the books you list have an impact on how many inquiries you receive. Men who list The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo as a favorite get 36 percent more messages. That's followed by 1984 (21%) and The Da Vinci Code (5%). For women, they see the biggest increase in messages from listing The Hunger Games (44%), The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (31%), A Song of Ice and Fire (30%), To Kill a Mockingbird (21%), and Pride & Prejudice (18%).

The weirdest thing that works is saying you read books by billionaire Richard Branson. Men who list the Virgin Group founder get a 74 percent increase in communication.

At the other end of the spectrum, some books are the garlic breath of the dating world. Namely, The Bible is one that doesn't generate much interest. It produces a 63 percent decrease in inquiries for women and men see a 37 percent decrease. That's the most toxic book for women, yet there's one that's worse for men. Harry Potter. Listing the book about a pubescent child wizard results in a 55 percent decrease in messages.

Also toxic for men are The Lord of the Rings (-24%) and A Song of Ice and Fire (-19%). For women, Fifty Shades of Grey (-16%) and Twilight (-6%) are the books that produce the largest decrease after The Bible.

The negative numbers sound bad, but maybe it's a good thing. Do you really want to go on a date with someone who isn't into sparkly vampires? It probably wasn't meant to be.

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Dustin Nelson is a News Writer with Thrillist. He holds a Guinness World Record but has never met the fingernail lady. Follow him @dlukenelson.