According to a poll, the ten books that people most frequently dishonestly claim to have read are:
1984
War and Peace
Ulysses
The Bible
Madame Bovary
A Brief History of Time
Midnight’s Children
In Remembrance of Things Past
Dreams from My Father
The Selfish Gene
Now let’s make our own confessions right here. Which books have you lied about reading?
I’ll start off by admitting that I once lied to a college professor about reading William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!. Being a 18-year-old newly introduced to the idea of intellectualism at the time, I simply assumed that the purpose of life was to read as many big, fancy-sounding books as possible. If I couldn’t read them, I could at least pretend that I’d read them and get brownie points that way.
I had a professor who liked to claim that Democracy in America by de Tocqueville was the most quoted, least read book in academia (second only to Clausewitz’s On War).
Madame Bovary!? How does that come to pass, and so often?
I remember once lying about ever having read any Stephen King. I was defending him to my writing teacher, and lied rather than admit I had no idea what I was talking about. Now I’ve read Cujo.
Why would I lie about reading a book? If I claim to have read a book it’s because I want to talk about it, which is a lot easier if I’ve read it.
What poll are you referring to, by the way? Can you link to it??
Of the books on your list, I’ve read all except for Midnight’s Children, In Remembrance of Things Past, and Dreams from My Father, and the really boring sections of the Bibles (otherwise known as the “censuses” in Numbers and, I think Deuteronomy and Chronicles). War & Peace was mighty slow going, but it was a grade. I read the others for pleasure.
I was supposed to read Rumah Kaca (House of Glass) by Pramoedya Ananta Toer for World Literature in 12th grade and I couldn’t slog through it. Not even in English - maybe I should have tried it in the original, since I was also studying Bahasa Indonesia at the time. Liiied through my teeth.
I also only skimmed Crime and Punishment during that class, although I did read it later, and more or less enjoy it.
Here you go. The poll seems to have been flawed, though – people who took it were given a list of ten books (the article doesn’t clearly state whether they were the same ten books each time) and asked to name the ones they had lied about reading.
I lied about having read A Confederacy of Dunces to a girl I was trying to impress once. In order to avoid being found out, I bought it the next day. Never got through it all, and the girl didn’t work out either. Would have a saved me 10 bucks and a couple of hours if I had simply told the truth.
Years ago I once lied about reading Atlas Shrugged. At about 30-ish, I finally knuckled down and read it cover-to-cover, and now I wish I was lying about it.
I would never claim now to having read a book I haven’t, though even to myself I might forget and think I “know enough” about a widely discussed book based on reading selected passages and/or second-hand summaries.
The only exception is that one time, in high school English class, when I faked my way through writing an in-class essay on Thoreau’s “Walden” without having finished it because I just… could not… read it. I believe the last thing I read was his shopping list before deciding I’d take my chances on winging it. This from a person who read through all of Dickens’ “Bleak House” (a 1000+ page tome) and managed to write a 15-page paper on it in one weekend.
I can’t think of any. There are a few that I ended up skimming my way through that I will still say that I have read (Atlas Shrugged). I’m not sure that is the same as lying.
Almost this. In one college course, I couldn’t make myself read more than a third of Cooper’s The Prairie or more than a few pages of James’ Portrait of a Lady, but was able to B.S. my way through the final exam which included both. I thus let my prof assume that I had read them, so I guess that is lying by omission.
A. If writing a paper on it counts as claiming to have read it, too many to count. I did this all the time in high school and college as a contest with myself to see how obvious I could make it that I hadn’t read the book, and still get an “A” just for writing original thoughts coherently.*
B. If A is true, but I get a pass if I actually read the book later, then about a dozen or so.
C. If B is true, but I get a pass if I started reading it and never got around to finishing, then maybe six, to the best of my recollection. (Corollary: If B is true, but I get a pass if I started reading it and consciously decided to stop because I thought it sucked, one. The sole outlier in this case is “Finnegan’s Wake”; at the time I saw little reason to bother.)
D. If A is not true, and the only thing that counts is a direct statement or claim that I read the book, then off the top of my head, I’d have to say none. It’s an interesting question; I’ll think about it and follow up if I remember anything, but I can’t imagine why I’d ever have done that.
*Answer: pretty damned obvious. My junior-level paper on Catch-22, about which I knew next to nothing beyond its being the origin of the phrase, was a logical exploration of the real-world implications of nonchalant acceptance of violent conflicts in an inherently nonsensical universe…basically a series of expanding and contracting convolutions ultimately adding up to “war is stupid”. It got a 102 and a recommendation from the professor that I expand it into a thesis should the opportunity arise. Ah, English courses.
None. I lied once about a book I intended to write to impress a guy, but you didn’t ask that. Otherwise, I’m so arrogant about my tastes in literature that I actually think it speaks in my favour that I couldn’t read beyond page ten of Ulysses. I read two on the list and liked them. (Proust and Flaubert)It’s interesting about the Bible though. I believe its unreadability is an integral part of fundamentalist religion; like the small print in a insurance policy, fundamentalists count on the fact that very, very few people actually have read the entire book, instead of cherrypicking and bluffing their way through.
My 11th grade lit class had to read Great Expectations. I got an A on the exam by taking good notes and parroting back everything the teacher said. As an educator now I realize I was being a bit dickish, but at the time I probably read 3 SF/fantasy novels per month and kind of resented that I was “forced” to read something I had no interest in.
I read two on the list and liked them. (Proust and Flaubert)It’s interesting about the Bible though. I believe its unreadability is an integral part of fundamentalist religion; like the small print in a insurance policy, fundamentalists count on the fact that very, very few people actually have read the entire book, instead of cherrypicking and bluffing their way through.