Posted on 02/03/2014 2:13:32 PM PST by jocon307
Have you ever lied about reading a book? Maybe you didn’t want to seem stupid in front of someone you respected. Maybe you rationalized it by reasoning that you had a familiarity with the book, or knew who the author was, or what the story was about, or had glanced at its Wikipedia page. Or maybe you had tried to read the book, even bought it and set it by your bed for months unopened, hoping that it would impart what was in it merely via proximity (if that worked, please email me).
(Excerpt) Read more at thefederalist.com ...
Yeah, that book annoyed me, too. Almost made me give up rabbit hunting. ;-)
It did provide a lovely nickname that could be applied to a certain Marxist, Muslim interloper: u embleer-rah. Do you remember the translation?
It was a thick book, with quite a few “self-serving” paragraphs, but one gets the impression that he really liked Fletcher Christian, and was totally flummoxed by the Mutiny.
It also showed his difficulty in getting a new command because of his history. The governorship in OZ was probably a combination of honoring him for his courage and seamanship and getting RID of him! LOL!
Origin of Species - no interest, other than history of science. Have read excerpts.
Les Miserables - Yep, I've read it. Even liked the lengthy digression into a history of the Paris sewers. Fun book. But then I like Anthony Trollope too (I've even read The Vendee.)
A Tale of Two Cities - I've read it. Didn't like it. Don't like Dickens in general.
1984 - read it, but agree with C.S. Lewis that Animal Farm is much better.
Democracy in America - don't know if it counts that I HAD to read this for a history class.
The Wealth of Nations - nope!
Moby Dick - I did read it for an English Lit class (an entire semester on Moby Dick, Typee, and Billy Budd!) but I read it again just for fun.
The Art of War - nope.
The Prince - only bits and pieces, for a history class.
Ulysses - stalled halfway through. Don't care for Joyce, would rather read Donn Byrne.
My favorite book-that-everyone-says-they-read-but-didn't is Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. I love medieval history so I read it all the way through, but you have to have a good grasp of the period, plus more than a passing familiarity with Latin and the Church Fathers. It's a tough read, but it sold millions and millions of copies and stayed on the NYT bestseller list for ages. Just to sit on people's coffee tables.
OK, you deserved a standing O for your impressive reading!
I’m slogging through War & Peace now. I was going to give it up, but I’ve decided to persevere. Like every other Russian work I’ve read, I’m sure it’s better in Russian. Although the translation I’ve got does a good job with that one guy with the speech impediment.
I liked it too, after I got used to Melville's style. Now, Last of the Mohicans is one that I found to be somewhat headache-inducing. Mark Twain was correct, IMO, in his assessment of James Fenimore Cooper.
I read Foundation as a teenager along with every other SF book I could find, even L. Ron Hubbard and the execrable double novels, the short pulp stuff that you read one story then turn it over and read the other one.
As a couple of others have mentioned, I tried “Ulysses”. I got through maybe a page or two and quit. It seemed like pure nonsense.
Same thing for “Tropic of Cancer or Capricorn” awful books.
I did read all the James Bond books, at least the original ones.
Ben-Hur is a sleeper. I really enjoyed it despite Lew Wallace's tendency to over-write and the fact that he spent a good deal of time shooting at some of my relatives.
It would require a very good teacher to get high school students to truly understand the principles in these books but it is certainly worth a try.
I have read 1984 and Animal Farm in high school. I read 1984 three or four times as an adult and I am amazed by the description of the world controlled by a totalitarian elite. You really need life experience to understand it.
I read Brave New World as an adult. It is an impressive work. There are similarities to 1984 but it emphasizes drugs and persuasion more than brute force as the means for a small group of totalitarians to gain control.
I have never read Atlas Shrugged. I saw the movie The Fountainhead with Patricia Neal and Gary Cooper. It was a great film.
how about going to your local library and checking out the audio version... it's fun to do that sometimes... you will like it!
“Animal Farm is much better”
That is a book that I must read, and haven’t yet. Also, as I mentioned here a while back “A Canticle for Liebowitz” (STILL haven’t read it!).
I’d like to try Trollope too.
I love Waugh, but I HATED Brideshead revisited, just hated it. (I don’t really know if this relates to Trollope, but I always think of them together.)
I can’t believe you had to read the whole Democracy in America for school. I have it in a beautiful edition but I’ve never read it.
I kind of agree with you about Dickens, he’s good when he is funny, but he seemed to give that up too soon.
The one I checked out from the library to read was over a thousand pages. Maybe bigger print or something. I got a little over a third of the way through, when I had to return it because someone else requested it. I got frustrated and read a plot synopsis online to find out what happened. A lot of good ideas, but Ayn seriously could have trimmed it down to 600 pages or so.
But they left out the number one book people lie about having read—The Bible! Really, how many people have actually read the whole thing? Not most, I bet.
I have read The Art of War and 1984.
Ploughed through "The Fountainhead" and decided enough is enough.
The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith: (Own it, Hardback)
Which edition do you prefer? I lost the copy I had before making a serious start.
Once upon a time Thomas Wolfe* would be on a list like this. Lately, though, people have even stopped pretending to have read him.
Lately, Toni Morrison would make a list of authors people lie about reading. Also, something massive and sufficiently multicultural like The Tale of Genji.
My reaction is:
Why read when you can write;)
Would love to participate in a ‘chain letter’ novel. Where FReepers use their considerable creative brains and develop a novel based on characters we adore and despise - with an ending that would satisfy all our fantasies.
After you jocon...............
"Persuasion" for me - "There was one called Persuasion, first; an’ the rest in a bunch, except another about some Abbey or other—last by three lengths." - one of Kipling's characters (who else could write a short story about a Masonic lodge in London during WWI and a shell-shocked soldier telling a story about a front-line Jane Austen appreciation society?)
And who, pray, has actually READ "The Light That Failed" or "The Naulakha"?
Les Miserables and A Tale of Two Cities are wonderful and I need to read them again.
1984 is short enough no adult has an excuse to not read it.
I keep the Art of War with commentaries in my shop on CD and have listened to them repeatedly.
I own Democracy in America and The Prince but haven't ever managed to get into them.
I've never had much interest in Ulysses, Moby Dick or Origin of Species though I've considered giving Adam Smith a try.
He also mentioned War and Peace which I've never attempted. That's actually rather strange since Anna Karenina is perhaps the greatest work of fiction I've ever read. I read Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the sixth grade. The whole thing. Yeah, I was that kid.
Is “Moby Dick” a social illness?
When I lived in Western Kansas I used to listen to “Radio Reader” on the educational station.
For some reason, I far, far prefer listening to books than reading them. I also comprehend much better listening.
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