“At least since Dante’s Paolo and Francesca fell in love over tales of Lancelot,” writes Rachel Donadio in a recent piece in the Times Book Review, “literary taste has been a good shorthand for gauging compatibility.”

Soooo true. During my rather long stint with Match.com last year, friends thought I was pretty open-minded. He’s an obsessive marathon runner? No problem. Only wears metrosexual embroidered dress shirts two sizes too small? Why not? Seventy-plus pounds heavier than “About Average” (and thus, not only obese, but a liar)? Well, you never know.

But no matter how otherwise good-looking, articulate, or humorous a potential match’s profile, his response in the “Last Read” field was make-or-break. The Da Vinci Code was a deal breaker.

Donadio claims it’s a gender issue:

Brainy women are probably more sensitive to literary deal breakers than are brainy men. (Rare is the guy who’d throw a pretty girl out of bed for revealing her imperfect taste in books.) After all, women read more, especially when it comes to fiction. “It’s really great if you find a guy that reads, period,” said Beverly West, an author of “Bibliotherapy: The Girl’s Guide to Books for Every Phase of Our Lives.” Jessa Crispin, a blogger at the literary site Bookslut.com, agrees. “Most of my friends and men in my life are nonreaders,” she said, but “now that you mention it, if I went over to a man’s house and there were those books about life’s lessons learned from dogs, I would probably keep my clothes on.”

However comforting/nauseating it may be to think that girls are brainier/more sensitive than boys, I know plenty of guys who care about books, and their girlfriend’s taste in books.

On her blog, Donadio asked readers to submit their own literary deal breakers. A few dozen of the 388 agreed with me about The Da Vinci Code (and other Dan Brown books). A few dozen more listed Ayn Rand, Danielle Steel, and Ann Coulter. But the vast majority were readers appalled at this kind of dating discrimination, calling people who do it: “petty;” “pretentious;” “judgmental;” “unoriginal, elite, and self-important;” “absurdly stereotypical;” etc.

For me (and probably for Donadio and the sources in her article), the aversion to bad writing has more to do with common values than pretension. I’m a writer, I value good writing, and probably wouldn’t get along with someone who didn’t.

(Anybody have an atypical literary deal breaker, preferably with an interesting back story? I’d love to hear about it…)