Not if they’re a classics major. Do you really think people can’t enjoy something just because it’s old? There’s a reason that stuff is still studied today.
I would only roll my eyes at someone who claimed a work that they really didn’t understand or hadn’t studied properly. Like, anyone who claims Finnegans Wake as their favorite book. Definitely a wanker.
Can we date? Wait… I am married and heterosexual. Bummer.
I read, I have been reading since I was a little kid. I read avidly, but the thing is that I read because it is fun, I have loved crummy books, but I have never understood or enjoyed most Russian classics. I just can’t connect. I also don’t care for romance, poetry, and self-help. I can enjoy a good whodunnit just like I have enjoyed some highfalutin literature. I enjoy reading bathroom literature. I enjoy reading “how it works” type books. I love history books (specially ancient history). I loved most of Stephen King books (a few I couldn’t even get past the first chapter). I read like a morbidly obese person eats: almost everything.
Since I love reading just for reading’s sake I tend not to judge people’s taste in literature. But any of the three quoted above, or anything in Oprah’s list will make me turn around and run. And this from someone who truly loves The Little Prince.
It seems like a lot of black guys on dating sites call * Rich Dad, Poor Dad* their favorite. I have no idea if the book is good or not, but the lack of originality bugs me.
Heh - 1984 is one of my favourite books and I’m sure I mentioned it on my dating profile. I find that an odd one to list, especially since the article just basically says it’s a crap book. How bad or good a book is is something you can have a fun conversation about, as it’s a matter of opinion; it’s not like it signifies anything major about your politics.
I saw a couple of women mention the Da Vinci Code as their favourite book and for me that was a deal breaker because it was such a huge sign that we wouldn’t have much in common. It’s not just a bad book, but listing it as your favourite book signifies that you probably don’t read much, and might be a bit prone to believing conspiracy theories, so we would just not get on.
That these women are looking for short, obnoxious men who have an older woman fetish and TALK LIKE THIS?
Let’s all list our favorite books and then harshly criticize each other for our bad life choices.
am I allowed to call that my favorite book if I have read it and studied it? I once talked to someone who insisted that there was no way I (or anyone else) “got” it no matter how much time and effort’s put into understanding the thing.
Me: “What’s your favorite book of all time?”
Date: “the Bible.”
Me: “Check please!”
Seriously though, I just came in to mention that I just finished reading “Anna Karenina.” (I tackle one big “classic” a year.) Would never call it my favorite book ever, and true many parts of it were a slough. But I didn’t hate it.
“On the Road” was a book I loved as a teenager. I re-read that about a year ago and distinctly loathed it. When I first read it, the wild, reckless hedonistic abandon appealed to my stifled, suburban miserable teenaged self. Now as a somewhat mature, much more grounded adult, I found all the characters to be nasty, self-absorbed misogynistic, alcoholic pricks.
“The Silmarillion” was just reams of back-story for LOTR. I would not date anyone who named that as their favorite book over LOTR or “the Hobbit.”
To the list, I’d add Thomas Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow.” I’ve met a few geeks who absolutely insist that it is THE. GREATEST. BOOK. OF. ALL. TIME. And that EVERYBODY says so. I’ve attempted to read it a few times, never saw the appeal.
My favorite books of all time: I’ve read “Wuthering Heights” many times (tho not in a few years), I’ve recently re-read “Watership Down” for about the 10th time in my life. Perhaps if pressed, I’d say “Edith Hamilton’s Mythology.”
I don’t think there’s any book that would immediately be a dealbreaker for me. WHY they like said book is more important than the book itself, I think.
Also if someone named their favorite book and then said the hadn’t read it since high school might make me furrow my brow. Don’t people usually re-read their favorite books?
Only if it was clear they’re posing. If they can tell their strophe from ekkyklema, then I got no problems. I know that when people ask me what my favorite book is, I usually tell them the last book I read that really blew my mind. The idea of having one book that throughout the echoing corridors of time is, was, and will forever be my favorite book is a little weird, I feel. I’d think it far stranger to have the same favorite book for more than 5 years regardless of what book it is, then to at the moment have something obscure or odd as your favorite book.
I’m glad I didn’t have such a rule. One of my wife’s favorite authors is Anne Rice and I hate Anne Rice.
Not necessarily. I’d call Nineteen Eighty-Four one of my favorite books, and I haven’t re-read it in over a decade because frankly I don’t need to, any more than I need to re-watch Star Wars, or Battlestar Galactica, or so on.
(Ditto for Illuminatus!, but that’s because I no longer have six weeks of free time in which to attempt to digest it.)
I think the Bible would be the dealbreaker for me, too. Hell, I’d feel the same way if they said the Gita!
The HP article lists a non-fiction book by a Germanic author with issues about race and power but doesn’t go full Godwin. Let’s face it, if someone’s favorite book is Mein Kampf, they are clearly undateable for all but a few, and those people are clearly undateable as well.
Confederacy of Dunces I get, and of course any Ayn Rand lover, but who cares if someone likes The Great Gatsby or Anna Karenina? At worst it makes them ordinary.
If someone asked me what my favorite book is, my answer might be something embarrasingly lame (e.g. “The Stand”). Not because my taste in literature is bad, but because I don’t routinely categorize things into favorites, and I would really have to think hard about the question to answer truthfully.
So unless I’m the only person like this on the planet, it could be that some people who come up with books like “Atlas Shrug” or “The Great Gatsby” just haven’t spent of lot of time figuring out what book–out of all the thousands they’ve read over the span of their literate lives–rates as #1. They’re just saying the first good book they’ve read that comes to mind. A lot of those books are ones read in youth.
Or maybe not and they just have bad or overly provincial tastes or are just poseurs.
Mein Kampf is a good example of needing more info. I could date someone whose favorite book it was if say, they were a biography or history buff and they loved the insight it gave into the terrible but historically important figurehead of the Nazis. I don’t think I could judge based on title alone.
lol. I’ll bet they can find lots of those on match.
Welcome to the Internet.
I dunno about “favorite book” but I’ve never understood the hatred of CoD. It’s a farce featuring a bizarre protagonist who thinks he knows everything but in his bumbling cluelessness leaves a trail of chaos in his wake. I repeat: welcome to the Internet.
My mother has this book where every story is an excerpt from another, including one from The Little Prince which I like. Seeing me reading the book, Mom promptly gave me TLP. I opened it, started reading and, on the second page, threw it against the floor and declared it a Stupid Book.
I still do like the story about the king who was a good king because the orders he gave to his subjects were to do things which it was in their nature to do, and I’ve gotten over being told I was stupid because I couldn’t recognize the picture in the first page (my version was more imaginative, actually), but I still don’t like it. Way too syrupy, most of it, and a prime example of “a book with children in it but which was never intended for children”.
I wouldn’t refuse to date a guy whose favorite book was TLP, but I might check him for fever…
That’s because you haven’t read it in the original Hebrew.