I sympathize with Sherman’s desire to find a mate who has also read his favorite book. If one reason we read, as Jonathan Franzen has said, is to insert ourselves into a larger community of writers and readers, then naturally we want the person we love to join us there. The writers with whom we identify most deeply can come to feel like extensions of ourselves: if my beloved doesn’t like my favorite book, isn’t he also rejecting me? Conversely, could I love a man who doesn’t love The Emigrants, alikewise dating site, or Anna Karenina, or any of the other books that have influenced most deeply the way I understand the world?

But there’s also something narcissistic about choosing alikewise dating site partner based on the congruency of his or her tastes with one’s own. In an essay that appeared in the Times Book Review earlier this year, Cathleen Schine wrote poignantly about her exhilaration when, newly married and sensitive to a dating site gaps in her reading history, she realized that her husband’s bookcase was hers for the taking. “It reached from one wall to the other, alikewise dating site, from floor to ceiling. It had been culled and collected by a person of know­ledge and taste, a product of Columbia’s core curriculum, alikewise dating site, and . it was arranged alphabetically. I started at the upper left hand corner (Jane Austen! J. R. Ackerley!) and worked my way to the lower right (Waugh! Wodehouse! Woolf!).” When they split up, Schine continues, and she found a different partner, “there waiting for me was a new bookcase full of other books.” Much of the joy in new love comes from the excitement of mutual discovery, of opening one’s mind to another person who opens his or her own in turn. A subject that never interested us before is suddenly fascinating, because the beloved is obsessed with it; and explaining our own obsessions to another person can help illuminate them all over again.

So if Matt Sherman doesn’t find his Black Swan-reading mate (the only woman who lists it on her profile lives in Canada), I suggest that he expand his search to include other books related to it: like Black Swan Green, David Mitchell’s novel about a bookish adolescent boy with a stutter growing up in 1980s England. I liked it; and so did Janet in Toronto, alikewise dating site, a fortyish book blogger with a chocolate lab. Maybe he should read it—and then drop her a line.

We're all bookworms here, yes? We've chatted about our favorite books, alikewise dating site, what we're reading for the summer and what we'd write books about. But does a person's taste in literature affect your romantic feelings for them?

Earlier today, Tres Sugar reported that there's a new dating website that's all about books. Alikewise helps users find "common ground based on what you like alikewise dating site read. Imagine a dinner party where you wander over to your host's bookshelf, and strike up a chat with the person next to you."

Users share their basic info (where they live, hair/eye color, etc), upload a profile picture and chat a bit about their taste in books. I'm not entirely sure what to make of this just yet. Like many of you bookish ladies, I love love love to read. I'll read anything: racy teen number one free dating site, travel memoirs, historical fiction; I'll take it all! But I can't help but wonder how honest (and judgmental) users on this type of site might be.

I'm sure a good number of users will list Wuthering Heights or One Hundred Years of Solitude among their favorite books, but will anyone admit that they loved the Twilight books? What about Nicholas Sparks books? When it comes to literature, alikewise dating site, I've always noticed that people are more reserved when sharing their favorites or even their guilty pleasures. While a lot of us gush that we dig cheesy reality shows (here and here), dishing about the not so top-shelf books we read is another story.

What do you literary lasses make of this dating website? Are you a book snob? Have you dated one? Do you think Alikewise users share their favorite books or just their favorites that have some bookish-street cred? And just for fun, let's list two books we love, but one has to be a guilty pleasure. Mine are Uncle Tom's Children and Twilight.

P.S. This dating site finds matches based on taste in music!

P.P.S. If a bookish dating site doesn't tickle your fancy, check out Glamour Matchmaker.

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As question-based online dating sites like Match, alikewise dating site, OkCupid (and others) become more popular, another trend has emerged: Niche dating sites for people who know exactly what matters (think geeks, alikewise dating site, cougar enthusiasts, music lovers, and more). Enter Alikewise.com.

Alikewise connects users with shared literary tastes and interests by using a matching algorithm similar to (and built on) Amazon's recommendation engine. But just because you're not a bookworm doesn't mean you won't find your match here. As one of the founders, Matt Sherman, explains: "The great thing about books is that they really can be a proxy for just about anything. There may be a book about running a triathlon or cooking or yoga or travel, for instance. The idea is as long as you have a passion for something and it's represented in your reading it's just a great way to match people." 

Men's Health sat down alikewise dating site the website's two founders, Matt Sherman and Matt Masina, and talked about their motivations for starting Alikewise dating site, what they hope to offer their users, and where they'd like to take the site further. 

MH: How did you both get started with the site, and where'd the idea come from? 

Sherman: Matt and I have known each other for quite a long time and we've both been in the technology world. But I had this idea after I had broken up with a girlfriend several years ago, alikewise dating site. I was thinking how it would be great if Alikewise dating site could meet a woman who had read a alikewise dating site book that is a favorite of mine, alikewise dating site, and how it would be great to have a conversation about it. The idea for a site focusing on shared book interests stayed about in my head for a while, and we talked about it a bit more, and eventually we decided it was something that's worth a try--people seemed very enthusiastic. Late in 2008, I decided to take the plunge and quit a great and very comfortable job to devote myself to this full-time.

Masina: Having been an avid online dater for some time, alikewise dating site, there's a lot that could be improved on existing online dating sites and it seemed alikewise dating site an opportunity for us to do something really different--we wanted to do something that had a background in sincerity, instead of these alikewise dating site or meat-market type sites.

MH: How'd you end up with the name Alikewise?

Sherman: We went through a lot of names. Although it's not a really sexy story, a lot of our first names were already taken, domains were already registered. It turns out a friend of mine is in a naming business. She's just got this mind that goes a mile a minute and she came up with dozens and hundreds of possible names, alikewise dating site, oriented not necessarily around literature per se but more around having things in common, alikewise dating site. We chose Alikewise because it's a bit literate and a bit clever but focusing more on the idea of commonality.

Masina: We're trying to get more of an intellectual type on the site rather than the average guy with his shirt off on the profile.we want to focus more on the intellectual aspects.

MH: Can you explain how the site works?

Masina: It has some aspects of traditional dating. You go online, create a profile, put an image, and people have the ability to search for you as soon as you create a profile. But where we are different--the first thing is, we don't have a lot of pull-downs and check boxes. You're not going to find a lot of questions like, "Are you a social drinker?" or "Do you smoke?" There's none of those selection boxes. Instead, we give people an area in My Stories where they write about themselves. We provide some questions that encourage users to talk about themselves. We want people to be sincere. The main differentiation from other dating sites is the recommendation engine for the books. Right up front we ask people to recommend books, and the choice to say why they like a certain book. It allows people to search by books that might match up with them, and we do this by integrating with Amazon's recommendation engine, the one that suggests similar books below the book on an Amazon page. We use that to help us along, because the chances of you and someone else having the exact same books are not as high as finding people who like similar books more generally. We use that technology based on what statistics say would be their match. As we move on we actually continue to apply more and more science to this search algorithm. As we get more data from more people, we hope to make this more and more correct. It's a work in process, and we're hoping to get there to a site like Pandora, finding attributes about books that we can really make good recommendations that they really like. We want to get there to where you put in a book name and you automatically find all these people that are right for you.

MH: Do you use any matching algorithms other than book choices?

Sherman: We alikewise dating site the basics. You do have to do gender, age, location, but we really wanted to focus on qualitative over quantitative.people use other dating sites' search features in a very exclusionary kind of way, where they eliminate people who like cats, or whatever. With ours, the basics are there but we didn't see the more specific questions as valuable, alikewise dating site. We're really trying to get people to go to the next level and explore.

MH: Tell us about the site's other features.

Sherman: We're working on a few interesting ideas that we call "icebreakers." We consider a book to be an icebreaker because if you have a book in common you have a first date conversation right off the bat. We've developed the ability to send somebody a book, protecting identities and all that, but the option to include a note to introduce yourself.

Masina: Currently, you can comment about a book that other people are unable to see. We don't want to be confused with one of these book community sites like Bookarmy. We are specifically oriented around dating. Part of our responsibility is to provide the tools for connecting people.it's really there to help get the conversation started.

Sherman: We think, especially for the readers of Men's Health, the great thing about books is that they really can be a proxy for just about anything--while you may look at our site, and say this is about literature or for bookworms, books really could be about anything. There may be a book about running a triathlon or cooking or yoga or travel. The idea is as long as you have a passion for something and it's represented in your reading it's just a great way to match people. It's sort of smart, active, passionate people, but it's not just an academic exercise--we think books are a very good, really specific way of revealing interests.

Masina: Yah, I'd like to say more about the sincerity part. The site's really for people who have a real sense of maturity in their lives, they're looking for a real relationship, alikewise dating site. We want people who are focused, going to have conversations of merit. We think those are going to build strong ties, for solid relations.

Sherman: People have asked us--why not do movies, alikewise dating site, why not do music? Books are so much more of an active focus; you're not going to finish a book if you're not focused.It's different than other forms of media that, alikewise dating site, relatively speaking, are a bit more passive; so in that sense, ones book interests' do represent a certain level of sincerity.

MH: Are there any pay-only features?

Masina: All sections of the site are free. You can buy books off the site and we do collect a commission off those purchases. Our revenue is more of a book store. And that's not to say in the future, there may be changes, but currently our only revenue is off the sales of books to the site.

Sherman: Generally, we really want to boost our numbers, our goal isn't to restrict that by making it pay-only.We currently don't have a subscription-based plan.

MH: The common married people dating sites, I think, is that women read a lot more than men--so you'd end up with a site with more women. Has this been a concern of yours?

Masina: That was a huge concern of ours. When we first got started, we wondered where we should be marketing to. But our numbers statistically show that we have slightly more men than women. We've been marketing in areas where a lot of intellectual men are hanging out alikewise dating site reading. People who are serious about taking care of themselves. Our efforts have been geared toward serious people.

Sherman: Because we're new, until about a month ago most of the people that had heard about us were sort of the technology world which does skew male. But it's--honestly I think we're going to get a lot of turn out with both men and women. It was a concern but it hasn't been one in practice.

MH: What would you recommend to users who are trying to get the most out of the site?

Masina: I would recommend looking at what other people have to say about their books and responding to them--people who care enough to write about the alikewise dating site that they love on the site, alikewise dating site. A lot of people have 2 or 3 paragraphs about a particular book that they love; that's telling you something about that person.

Sherman: Make your profile personal, give people something to ask you about. That's something to differentiate between us and a more generic dating site – a number driven dating site. The things people say on those sites are fairly generic--they like to travel, etc. With Alikewise, alikewise dating site, you might put up Lonely Planet: Africa--now that gives you something to talk about. Giving specifics is what really gets conversation going.

MH: So I'm curious, now--what was that one book that first inspired you to start the site?

Sherman: The Black Swan [(The Impact of the Highly Improbable), alikewise dating site, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb]--it really changed my thinking about a lot of things.That's just an example. I would love to have a great conversation with someone who's read that book. And I think if this person likes that book, alikewise dating site, we must have something in common. Books tell you about what questions people ask. What in your life are you trying to think about, what in your life are you trying to learn?

Masina: For me, one book would be Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. He does a good job of stepping outside the human race and taking a look inward at it and seeing how people evolved. It's my favorite book of all time; it opened my eyes to a lot of things. I come from a religious alikewise dating site, so there's definitely a religious theme to my book selections.

Sherman: Hearing people discuss their favorite books, I'm shocked no one has done this before. It can be very broad; books can be a lot of things to a lot of people.

Masina: And looking at some of the statistics online, the feedback that we get back from our customers, we get a lot of information from them.and not one person has asked alikewise dating site search by that kind of information (hair color, height, etc.). People are really going by the book information and people are finding value in that.

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