The Top Ten Books People Lie About Reading

The Federalist ^ | 01/16/2014 | Ben Domenech

[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).

[yarddog]

I haven’t read all of Scott’s novels but I noticed he has a tendency to treat some of the despised levels of society with empathy.

The Jews in Ivanhoe and the Gypsies in Quentin Durward. I am sure I read that a lot of his work was simply to pay off debts.

[Charles Martel]

Now just a dang minute. Milton never told a single knock-knock joke in his life. How can you take a literary figure seriously who’s never told a knock-knock joke?

Does this measure of literary significance also factor in the dropping of ping-pong balls from the ceiling?

[Revolting cat!]

Check out Kent Wascom’s “The Blood of Heaven” - historical fiction at its best.

[AnAmericanMother]

FReepers are an interesting bunch.

I've got a lot of ideas here for books I haven't read yet.

Funny how we all tend to read different books based on our interests, or just because we happened to run across them.

[Hoodat]

I''ve tried reading The Brothers Karamazoff as well as Crime and Punishment. Did not get a third of the way through with either. The only Russian author I have had success in reading is Ayn Rand, who is #10 on the list.

Atlas Shrugged I've read four times. 1984 I've read once. Never read any of the rest.

[Hoodat]

My copy has over 1100 pages. Once you get to page 450, it’s all downhill from there.

[left that other site]

This is such a delightful thread, as it contains lots of discussion without acrimony! :-0

[Charles Martel]

Classic. I wish I could commit the entire thing to memory.

Indeed. There are portions which seem highly memorable, such as:

"Cooper's eye was splendidly inaccurate. Cooper seldom saw anything correctly. He saw nearly all things as through a glass eye, darkly."

[Revolting cat!]

I used to work with this guy who was a college dropout, highly intelligent, well read, and very insecure. He was much better read in English literature than I could ever hope to be (maybe his major was English, I dunno.) Then he met this woman at work who was working on a Ph.D in, what else, social studies. She captured him, he fell in with her crowd, and I saw him reading popular books, not Danielle Steel, but one level above that. I asked him about it, and he explained what I should have always understood but never had: he read it to have something to talk about with the people he was running with. Well, D’UH, Homer, you’ve stumbled on the secret to happy life!

[meowmeow]

I was sooo pissed off that I didn’t get a happy ending with the rabbits.

Years ago, on an all-night shift with nothing to do, everyone was sitting around discussing favorite books. Watership Down came up and I mentioned that it was one of my favorites. A young guy said he had heard of it and wanted to read it. So I brought it in for him. A few days later he brought it back and said, "This is stupid. Rabbits can't talk!"

I always felt sorry for that guy...

[a fool in paradise]

I saw the 1971 Australian film Wake In Fright last year. There were a few good lines:

http://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2009/july/1342411267/kate-jennings/home-truths

GRANT: I’m bored with it. The aggressive hospitality, the arrogance of stupid people who insist you should be as stupid as they are.

and

GRANT: What’s the matter with you people? Sponge on you, burn your house down, murder your wife, rape your child – that’s all right. But not have a drink with you? Don’t have a flaming bloody drink with you? That’s a criminal offence! That’s the end of the bloody world!

[a fool in paradise]

A few days later he brought it back and said, "This is stupid. Rabbits can't talk!"

Neither can pigs.

< /Al A. Gorie >

[dainbramaged]

I’m more of a Louis L’Amour kind of guy.

[a fool in paradise]

Many of the historical texts I read cover corruption in the music business. Names, places, scams (creaming someone’s load of cutout records, mob retribution on bootleggers, mob takeovers of publishing rights, writing down one song for the station’s logbooks while playing another artist on the air, “payola” (which never ended), sweetheart contracts on civic venues, caberet laws in the modern era to restrict live music establishments, booking scams, militant Leftist thuggary at Woodstock, etc.).

[Mad Dawgg]

"Which edition do you prefer? I lost the copy I had before making a serious start."

My copy is the Knopf printing from the Everyman's Library. The preface is by D. D. Raphael.

[meadsjn]

Atlas Shrugged
I know I really should. And at times my intentions have been really good.
But then I look at all 839 pages and 3 1/2 pounds of it sitting on the coffee table....and I just can’t.

Spare yourself. I finally did read it about ten years ago, and it was the biggest waste of a month of reading time I can remember. There was far too much unnessary repetition; and then some more repetition; then another 150 pages of redundancy; then more repetition.

The necessary story and points could have been condensed to 100 or so pages, and it would be a great book.

Here's the gist: Socialism is bad and destructive. Capitalism is good and constructive. Engineers and entrepeneurs deserve the wealth created from their efforts.

Oddly, Rand seemed to believe that people doing the labor to make all those ideas into reality should work for the sheer joy of working.

[Mr Rogers]

“He was more inclined to military books and murder mystery stuff than the classics!”

Your Dad & I have similar interests, then. Most of the ‘classics’ that I read were read when I was a boy. By the time I was an adult, I ceased worrying about what book was ‘good’, and read for information, work, or pleasure. For the latter...mysteries and military books - often biographies - are my preference.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

The last few novels I read were...And yes, I did read them.

THE NAME OF THE ROSE and FOUCALT’S PENDULEM by Umberto Eco
TRUE GRIT
MOBY DICK
THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA
LONESOME DOVE
THE WALKING DRUM
Several FU MANCHU novels
Short novels of H P LOVECRAFT
THE LOST GOD and other adventure stories by John Russell(Very un-PC language)

I’m going to start on Robert Bloch’s three novels, PSYCHO, PSYCHO II, AND PSYCHO HOUSE.

From ghosties and ghoulies, and long legged beastes and things that go bump in the night, AND ESPECIALLY VICTORIAN ENGLISH NOVELS,Good Lord Protect US!

[Terry L Smith]

Sussquehana Patriot wrote”:
““and paid attention to the speeches given by a certain Premier Kruschchev, when he endangered me and my fellow Americans.”

Did you read “JFK & The Unspeakable” yet? If yes, I’d like your opinion on what the author says about JFK and Nikita. If not, and you read the book someday, since you lived through it, I’d still be interested in your opinion.”

—

I have a unique viewpoint on that historical time. I was a GI Brat, on the farthestmost Continental Air Defense Interdiction Zone perimeter defense base, Otis AFB, Mass., in the day where liquid-fueled, nuclear-tipped guided air defense missiles sat in silos on immenent alert status, supersonic jet fighters armed with nuclear warheaded aerial intercept missiles sat on alert running at idle, and old four-engine modified Boeing Constellation aircraft flew 18 hour radar picket flights 200 miles offshore, over the North Atlantic, watching for any signs of a Soviet bomber raid. Never mind the Soviets, just one “Broken Arrow”, from one missile, and Cape Cod would have looked like Hiroshima, after the detonation of that bomb. That’s how big those warheads were!

I have not been aware, that such a book was written, sorry.

[lonestar]

If you ever get into it, you won't be able to put it down.

I've read it twice...decades between.

Reading it today, you can put names and faces on some othe the characters...all in the Obama administration.