this is a book review of sorts.
i picked up this book a little while ago – what i like about it is that it combines two things that i rather enjoy.
1. it’s a book
2. it contains dating ads
apparently over the last ten years the London Review of Books has grown a reputation as a good place to meet interesting, like-minded (or crazy-minded) folks, and so their personal column has grown in popularity and bizarreness.
clever chap, David Rose, has compiled some of the funniest/strangest/wtf personal ads into this rather sweet book.
it’s the kind of book you pick up, read a couple, have a laugh and then put it down again and forget about it until next time you come across it and pick it up, read a couple, have a laugh. you get the picture.
it’s also fun to read aloud to a friend/lover. particularly if you’re a whopping nerd like me.
here are a few of my favourites copied and pasted directly out of the book.
these are for real, promise. (anything in purple is transcribed directly from the book itself):
I like my women the way I like my kebab. found by surprise after a drunken night out and covered in too much tahini. Before long I’ll have discarded you on the pavement of life, but until then you’re the perfect complement to a perfect evening. – man, 32, rarely produces winning metaphors.
Your buying me dinner doesn’t mean I’ll have sex with you. I probably will have sex with you, though. – Honesty not an issue with opportunistic male, 38.
Are you Kate Bush? Write to obsessive man (36). Note, people who aren’t Kate Bush need not respond.
Slut in the kitchen, chef in the bedroom. Woman with mixed priorities (37) seeks man who can toss a good salad.
Bald, short, fat and ugly male, 53, seeks short-sighted woman with tremendous sexual appetite.
Romance is dead. So is my mother. Man, 42, inherited wealth.
List your ten favourite albums… I just want to know if there’s anything worth keeping when we finally break up. Practical, forward thinking man, 35.
Employed in publishing? Me too. Stay the hell away. Man on the inside seeks woman on the outside who likes milling around hospitals guessing the illnesses of out-patients. 30-35. Leeds.
Mature gentleman, 62, agend well, noble gray looks, fit and active, sound mind and unfazed by the fickle demands of modern society seeks… damn it, I have to pee again.
i think i need to write one of my own. something like:
woman, 35, seeks man with a large sense of humour. not so large that he laughs at me in a swimming costume though.
hmmm, it needs work methinks.