Alice at Penguin Books

......where we hope you’ll find someone amongst our singles whose words will inspire you

Can you tell whether you'll hit it off with somebody by the books they read? Will you be judging more than just the cover when you see somebody ploughing through Proust?

According to a host of recent polls, reading is officially sexy. Neglect your depilation and cancel your gym membership - you'd be better off heading to your local bookstore. Yes, it's not just knowing that somebody can read that's important, it's what they read.

You can go on singles nights in libraries and there's even a hybrid speed-dating book club in a pub. Here at Penguin Books we’ve teamed up with match.com to create penguindating.co.uk. You can be intrigued, perplexed, turned off or turned-on by our singles' reading habits. Now we don't want to get too snobby here, because one woman's Vampire Encyclopaedia is another's love at first bite. A young buck reading a history of Goldman Sachs might be exactly what you're after even though you're busy stockpiling Marian for a week in the Balearics. Sometimes it’s enough to provoke curiosity when a person’s reading taste jars with your mental image of what they should be reading. That guy who looks like he’s just clocked-off from a building site, surely he can’t be clutching the collected works of Jane Austen?

Having a snoop around somebody else's bookshelf might take a couple of dates, but this is a great shortcut to spark a connection with somebody who will also find bliss in Dostoevsky or a weakness for Donna Tartt. See what our singles have just finished reading and strike up a conversation. Personally anybody reading Irvine Welsh would do it for me… but there doesn't always have to be mirror relationship between book and admirer.

What books would make you sit up and take notice? Here's where you'll find out.