The sluttiest thing a man can do is read

John Waters once said “if you go home with somebody, and they don’t have books, don’t fuck them.” It’s advice that many of us have taken to heart: recent data published by Tinder found that bios mentioning the term “book boyfriend” rose by 58 per cent in 2024, spiking to 77 per cent in January 2025. Relatedly, the data also revealed a 16 per cent year-on-year increase in bios mentioning “reading”. Clearly “looking for a man in finance” is so last year. Now, it appears that women are looking for a man who reads.

Thirst for literary men is evident everywhere. Jacob Elordi went viral in 2023 after he was papped browsing a bookstore in Sydney; in the photo, he’s seen holding a copy of Suzie Miller’s Prima Facie in one hand, another book in the other, with a third jammed into the pocket of his cargo pants. “Jacob Elordi and books? I am going feral,” read one post on X responding to the pictures. Pedro Pascal has also been lauded for his unabashed passion for literature and even earned a feature on the @hotdudesreading Instagram page after he was spotted reading Killing Pablo by Mark Bowden on the subway. The page, which features hot dudes reading (duh), has an impressive 1.2 million followers – testament to just how many people are attracted to well-read men.

So what is it about a man who reads that is so irresistible? For literary-minded women, there’s the simple fact that it’s just nice to have something in common with a potential partner. “I’ve dated men who were super smart in STEM subjects, but the conversation dies out after a little while,” says Mishti, a 23-year-old avid reader. This chimes with 27-year-old Maddy. Like Mishti, she’s a bookworm. “When I first met my boyfriend, he didn’t read fiction and it made me a little sad,” she says, explaining that she enjoys the feeling of being “deeply connected to the world” through reading and wished she could share this with her boyfriend. When he started picking up novels, Maddy was thrilled. “I felt so proud of him. I really love that he reads now.”

There’s also the fact that being a reader can (sometimes) reveal a lot about a person. Straight women are more likely to view literary guys as more emotionally intelligent than non-readers: a study published in 2023 even found that a sizable 95 per cent of women consider it to be a green flag if a man is a reader. “I think reading men are far better at communicating their thoughts and feelings,” Mishti says. “[Reading fiction] suggests a willingness to engage with and understand the world beyond their own. It’s sort of a low bar, but it’s still pretty rare,” adds 25-year-old Maya, who also has a strong penchant for men who read. “So for a man to have a real interest in the world – in other peoples’ stories and something outside their own existence – is definitely attractive. Reading is also a humble act – like an acknowledgement that someone else’s thoughts are worth your time,” she says, adding that “curiosity” and “humility” are hugely attractive qualities in her eyes. 

Maya caveats that she prefers readers of fiction who branch out from the usual self-help books that straight men often reach for, which are usually centred around banal topics like making loads of money or self-optimisation. She cites Robert T Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter’s bestseller Rich Dad Poor Dad and the works of Robert Greene as prime examples of these kinds of books (I’d add How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie, and Atomic Habits by James Clear, and anything by Jordan Peterson). There’s something sweet, she explains, about a man “wanting to be immersed in something unreal, in a world that doesn’t exist”. She adds that it’s a bonus if they read books authored by women.

I think reading men are far better at communicating their thoughts and feelings

It’s also possible that there’s an evolutionary reason behind this widespread preference for literary men. Dr Alex Jones is a senior lecturer in Psychology at Swansea University with expertise in the psychology of attractiveness. He refers to an evolutionary psychology theory called the “mating mind hypothesis” which argues that human intelligence evolved because of mate choice. “That is, females found intelligence an attractive trait in partners, and so through millennia of choosing partners who showed cues of intelligence, we became more and more intelligent as a species as our offspring inherited both the trait and the preference for it.” While for our ancestors, starting a fire using nothing but twigs and rocks was regarded as an indicator of intelligence, in today’s world we’re more likely to get the hots for men brandishing Daunt Books totes (God help us).

There are, of course, a lot of men who merely masquerade as readers as a way to curry favour with women. Doubtless many of us have interacted with men who think liking Charles Bukowski or Jack Kerouac is a substitute for a personality. A sizeable proportion of the posts submitted to @beam_me_up_softboi – a popular Instagram page dedicated to sharing screenshots of cringeworthy DMs sent by artsy fuckboys – feature men who market themselves as literature lovers in a way which feels a little disingenuous. One post captures an anonymous man using a book as a prop in a desperate attempt to chat up the woman who submitted the screenshot: “I read French literature on the tube,” the message reads. “Please please fuck me.” 

Maddy agrees that there are definitely men who pretend to be into reading to impress women, explaining that she’d be “suspicious” that a man was merely seeking to “score emotional intelligence points” if they kept harping on about novels. She suggests that ideally, being a bookworm would be “a tertiary part” of a man’s personality rather than his whole personality. “There’s definitely an epidemic of performative male readers, especially when it comes to feminist lit,” Maya adds, citing the growing numbers of men basking in the London sun “locked in on the second page of some Didion paperback”.

Thankfully, it is possible to sort the wheat from the chaff. “It’s easy to weed out softbois out if they have no more than a surface level understanding of the books in question,” Mishti says. But dispiritingly, men who read are a dying breed. Recent YouGov research found that while 66 per cent of women have read or listened to a book in the last year, only 53 per cent of men said the same. Of people who had read a book, women were more likely to read fiction for some or all of their titles (63 per cent) than men (46 per cent). Perhaps this is part of the appeal too – men who read are increasingly like gold dust, and scarcity often drives demand. 

There are lots of reasons why men should read more fiction. Novels have the power to entertain, challenge, and comfort their readers. And I think we can all agree that someone like Sally Rooney does an immeasurably better job at articulating the experience of being a man in today’s world than, say, Andrew Tate. There are demonstrable mental health benefits to reading, too, such as lower stress levels, higher self-esteem, and lower rates of depression. But if these reasons still aren’t enough to convince men to pick up a paperback, then can they please consider doing it for us straight women? There’s a real dearth of fanciable men right now. Help us out here. Pick up a book. Please.