Lying about books?

I Tweeted about this, and Charles picked it up on his blog: The Top Ten Books people have lied about reading.

(More commentary here

The list is this:

The top 10 books people claim to read but haven't
1 1984 by George Orwell (26%)
2 War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (19%)
3 Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (18%)
4 The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger (15%)
5 A Passage to India by EM Forster (12%)
6 Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien (11%)
7 To Kill A Mocking Bird by Harper Lee (10%)
8 Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (8%)
9 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (8%)
10 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (5%)

One thing strikes me - a lot of these books are "required to read in school" books. I read 1984 (and also Brave New World) as a high schooler. And I read Catcher in the Rye for the same thing. And I read To Kill a Mockingbird even earlier than that, seventh grade, I think.

So it's entirely possible the "lying" stems from, "Oh, yes, Mrs. English Teacher, of COURSE I read it."

But - I've read half the books on the list:

1. 1984. I also read Brave New World about the same time, both for school - and on my own, I read Zamaitin's "We" (which is very like 1984, but written earlier and by a Russian). I thought then, and I still think, that if any of the dystopian scenarios come to pass, it will be more like Brave New World, where the populace demands the government pacify and take care of them, and they really just want one long soma holiday.

Another thought: I have absolutely no desire to read dystopian-future novels. When the whole Hunger Games series was really popular, some of my friends here were reading it and kind of pushed it on me, but I knew I didn't want to read it. I don't like books like that, where the whole world is kind of screwed up and awful, and the assumption is that it will always be like that, and while there are people who can be heroic in the middle of that, still, most people are living in a screwed up and awful world.

2. I have not read. I have it on my bookshelf. Not to impress anyone; I found a nice copy inexpensively (it's the Heritage Books version and is supposedly a good translation - I think it's the Aylmer translation)

3. I think Great Expectations is one that many people read in school as a kid. I did not. I read it on my own, about 10 years ago. I enjoyed it, I found it an interesting and at times entertaining story. I think it's tied with Pickwick Papers for my favorite Dickens.

4. Catcher in the Rye is something I read as a teenager. I loved the book; I even dressed as Holden Caulfield one year for Hallowe'en. (I had very short hair at the time - I was a swimmer - but obviously I was not tall enough to "pass," really, as Caulfield. Also I was a weird kid.)

I tried to re-read it a few years ago and found it kind of exhausting. I don't know. It's possible to grow up without becoming too much of a phoney, I wanted to shout at Holden. (I suspect a lot of these books - this one, Great Expectations, possibly Jane Eyre and Mockingbird - are assigned because the protagonist is about the same age as the kids reading it. I'm not sure about that philosophy; I think students can relate to  stories where the protagonists are older than they are.

5. I have not read.

6. Tried to read it, bogged down in the battles mid book-2. In some ways I'm really not a fantasy reader, I guess. I've bogged down in most of the fantasy novels I've tried to read recently.

7. I have read To Kill a Mockingbird (and here in the US, Mockingbird is one word...) multiple times. I like it. I think it's a good book and in a way it's a shame it's apparently the only book Harper Lee felt moved to write. I also think the movie based on it is very good. I suspect this one is assigned a lot in school because it's pretty easily readable, and it also raises issues of fairness and unfairness, of race, and of how we treat "outsiders" (like Boo Radley).


8. I have not read

9. I read this in my mid 20s. I liked Pride and Prejudice, I think I should re-read it some time. I recently read Sense and Sensibility and I think I was struck even more now than I was then at Austen's voice and her humor. I get that it's not for some people, but I enjoy it. I like her skewering of some of the conventions of the day, of some of the hypocrisies. (I wonder, is there anyone writing like that today? I'm sure there is.)

10. Read it as a teen, liked it then, tried to re-read it a few years ago and found it really overblown and emotional - people having crises and fainting all over the place. And I get that that's "gothic" romance, but I think that kind of thing appealed to me more when I was younger than I am now. Perhaps it's because I deal with some people on a daily basis who go into "Of all the worst things in the world, this is the worst thing ever" mode pretty easily.


Actually, I guess I've read more than half - six of the ten books, attempted one other, and plan some day to read yet another. (War and Peace).

I don't really get the concept of claiming to have read stuff you haven't. I suppose it's to "look smart" or something, but you're going to look pretty dumb if you run up against someone who LOVES the book you are pretending to have read and brings up some obscure point you aren't familiar with.

And yeah, a lot of things, you can get the basics of them from popular culture - I've never read "Treasure Island," but I know the basic story of it and the characters (and have seen a movie adaptation of it....the old Disney one from the 50s, and also, I confess, the Muppet version, which isn't terribly true to the book but is amusing). But I'd never claim to have read it.