Reason #4: I like good modern fiction. Ian McEwan, Zadie Smith, Salman Rushdie, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Tim O'Brien (although that
The Things They Carried isn't really fictional is a legitimate point), Kurt Vonnegut, David Foster Wallace (though I admittedly haven't made it through
Infinite Jest yet--I twice started it and realized it was going to make me flunk out of school or lose my job--and I think his non-fiction is overrated), Milan Kundera, Dave Eggers, and Thomas Pynchon are some of my favorite authors. But I've got some guilty pleasures, too:
Harry Potter,
The Perks of Being a Wallflower, lesser-known young adult author William J. Brooke's
Teller of Tales, and several trashy fantasy series (David Eddings's
Belgariad being chief among them).
Reason #5: Dating me would be a good ego boost. Not in the "you-should-date-me-because-I'm-so-awesome-you-would-be-happy-just-to-get-to-spend-time-with-me" sense, but rather in the "you-should-date-me-because-wow-will-it-feel-good-to-have-at-least-one-person-around-who-isn't-a-massive-overachiever" sense. I mean, c'mon, you run for
Team USA Minnesota. As best I can tell from their bios, between them your teammates have earned at least 46 NCAA All-American honors, have represented Team USA in international competitions at least 35 times (24 of them in World Championship events), won 21 national championships at levels ranging from high school to professional, have made 3 USA Outdoor Track World Championship teams, won the USA Road Circuit 2 times, and been named USATF Long Distance Runner of the Year twice. Also, one of them has a graduate degree. Rather than having to live up to these high standards all the time, wouldn't it be nice to date a guy who knows you're a higher-achiever than him at, well, pretty much everything? There's just no pressure there.