I'll Be Doing A Little Extracurricular Reading This Summer

Yahoo! News:

In a bid to lure men in Britain away from TV soccer games and into book shops, publisher Penguin Books will send out a sexy model to offer 1,000-pound ($1,837) prizes to males spotted reading a selected title.

The publicity ploy, launched Monday, aims to boost sales among men, who on average buy fewer books than women.

Penguin's so-called Good Booking Girl will canvass the streets this month for men older than 16 years reading versions of Nick Hornby's "31 Songs" that bear a special cover sticker.

A different title will be chosen each month.

At the same time, Penguin, a unit of Pearson Plc, released results of a poll in which 85 percent of women said a man could increase his chances of getting a date by talking about a favorite book.

Here's the reading list.

"It's to sex up the book industry, which probably needs it, but also to address the more serious issue that reading has fallen off the radar of younger men," said Neil Griffiths, author of Penguin-published "Betrayal in Naples."

Or maybe it's just to sell more of their books, from Penguin's website:

What women really want is a man with a Penguin. You may not even need to read it, just bend the covers, let it stick out of your pocket and the book will do the talking!