What your lover reads

Some women break up with their boyfriends because said boyfriends have crappy taste in books. Thus reported the NYT Book Review recently in an essay with the snarky title, "It's Not You, It's Your Books":

Some years ago, I was awakened early one morning by a phone call from a friend. She had just broken up with a boyfriend she still loved and was desperate to justify her decision. “Can you believe it!” she shouted into the phone. “He hadn’t even heard of Pushkin!”
We’ve all been there. Or some of us have. Anyone who cares about books has at some point confronted the Pushkin problem: when a missed — or misguided — literary reference makes it chillingly clear that a romance is going nowhere fast.

It goes on to explore more salient points: Literary taste can point to important differences in education or class; and the dumpers tend to be brainy women.
I myself side with Marco Roth, an editor who's quoted in the story:

"I think sometimes it’s better if books are just books. It’s part of the romantic tragedy of our age that our partners must be seen as compatible on every level."

Who wants a romantic partner who agrees with you on everything? How boring is that? Though I must confess, my own spouse impressed me early on in our relationship when he told me his favorite book was Cannery Row.
"Cool, Steinbeck," I thought. Then I read it and thought it was just OK. It's nice, but it's not much compared with "East of Eden" or the luminous "Grapes of Wrath." And it's kind of a "guy" book.
Years later, it's pretty obvious we have very different tastes in books. He not much for fiction, but reads quirky histories about things like the Dust Bowl or the evolution of the public swimming pool.
We do bond over other reading material, though: We're total news junkies, and we're often turning each other on to different news stories or Web sites. It's been six years, and we're still reading the news together.