For something that happens mostly alone and in silence, reading can be surprisingly intimate. Our favorite books reveal our interests, inspire the way we think, and offer storylines and fantasies we secretly relate to—which is why when you meet someone who shares your literary taste, it can feel less like a coincidence and more like a fated signal: Perhaps that your minds—and your hearts—are aligned.
Maybe that’s why reading, once a solitary, “nerdy” hobby, has become one of the most social, romantic, and aspirational acts to be caught doing—on the subway, in the park, or during a walk around town. In recent years, book clubs have become social hubs for like-minded people to engage in intellectual, sometimes flirty, conversations. (There are countless celebrity-hosted ones to participate in, which says something in and of itself.) Even the rise of the hot “performative reader”—a person deliberately seen with a well-chosen title—speaks to how literary taste has become a signal of wit, desirability, and even sex appeal.
At its core, the connection reading sparks is deeply personal. “The way a book impacts you may be completely different from the way it impacts someone else,” Maura Cheeks, author and founder of Liz’s Book Bar, a social book bar in New York City, tells SELF. “Which is why when two people love the same novel, they’re both acknowledging that they’re connecting over something more personal and profound that happened in their psyche.”
Of course, this is what brought superstar Dua Lipa and actor Callum Turner together, as news of their sweet, serendipitous meet-cute has been making the rounds on the internet. “[We] realized we were reading the same book,” Turner told The Sunday Times. “It’s called Trust [by Hernán Díaz] and I had just finished the first chapter and I told her and she looked at me and said, ‘I just finished the first chapter too.’ I said, ‘So we’re on the same page.’”
Is a shared taste in reading just a quirky conversation starter? Or can it be a sign of deeper romantic compatibility? Experts, including book bar owners and a couples therapist, tell SELF it actually might be the latter. Here’s how.
It signals emotional and intellectual depth.
“How someone engages with a book can reveal how they process life,” Annalyse Lucero, LMFT, a licensed therapist based in New Mexico, tells SELF. Maybe you both cried over the same heartbreaking plot twist, laughed at an author’s dry humor, or saw yourselves in a character’s complicated mental health struggle.
