There were only two books assigned in high school that I didn’t read. The first was The Scarlet Letter, which was so boring that I simply couldn’t take it. Great literature or not, it’s a 25-page short story edited down to a trim 180 pages. ugh.
The second was Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather. I honestly can’t remember why I didn’t read it, but I just lost interest about halfway through and never picked it up again.
On your list, I’ve read 1984 and Madame Bovary; loved the former, hated the latter, but I did read them all the way through. I’ve read large chunks of the Bible (Catholic high school) and A Brief History of Time, but I won’t claim to have read them in full.
Yeah, but don’t read too much into that. It was a freshman-level AP course, the teacher/professor was about as crazy as you’d have to be to assign AP high school students to read Finnegan’s Wake, and my paper was about a half-step away from pure postmodern-deconstructionist psychobabble. A real Lit professor, as opposed to the wackaloon I had, would have failed it without a second glance.
That’s hardly my only story about that teacher, but that’s for another thread…
I’ve read >75% of 1984, The Bible, A Brief History of Time, and The Selfish Gene, so I’d probably say I’ve read those if they came up. I guess that would depend on your definition of “lying.” If it was relevant, I would admit I didn’t finish.
The Bible and 1984 eventually got really boring.
A Brief History of Time got to a point where it was just words passing underneath my eyes, so I figured what’s the point. I might try again sometime since I was a teenager at the time. I’ve had college physics and astronomy in the meantime so those might help.
The Selfish Gene is perpetually on hold at the library and I ran out of time when I borrowed it (I read >5 books at a time so it takes me forever in absolute time to finish one.) I do intend to finish it one day, as I liked it a lot.
Another one here for the “wrote a paper without reading the book” type of deception.
In high school we were assigned a paper on an American writer. Now, the actual assignment was really about the biographical information/historical context of the author and their work, so for the class I was writing about Herman Melville without having read Moby-Dick, and that was perfectly okay.
However, I don’t think that the contest I submitted it to would have given me a $250 prize if they knew I was using all second-hand information for my references to the plot of the book.
I did read Moby-Dick later and actually liked it, so there’s that redemptive aspect.
I’ve accidentally lied about having read a few short stories by well-known authors. I would assume that the story was in one of their anthologies that I had read and say yes when asked about a particular title, only to find out later that I was mistaken.
Gone with the Wind. I absolutely hate it. I just pretended to read it for class for the history teacher. It was the one time I didn’t care what grade I got.
The only one of those I would consider lying about having read is 1984. Most of the others are too long and obviously boring to seriously expect it. The list struck me as an odd top ten but I suppose one is more likely today to be asked about having read Obama’s book than most of the musty old classics.
My mom once gave me a copy of The Pillar of the Earth and bugged me for two years about reading it. Finally, I one day answered “Yeah, I did read it” and when she asked me what I thought, I dredged my memory of a couple SDMB threads panning it to say “Well, the historical parts were pretty interesting and stuff but the actual plot was kinda ‘meh’ and predictable but it was okay.”
At least she stopped asking me about it. It’s still sitting in my office, unread.
The only thing that was close for me was the opposite. I wrote on a book that I knew the teacher or anyone grading couldn’t possibly have read. It was for the NYS English Regents and just before taking it, I had finished a serialization of Emphyrio by Jack Vance. The book was not yet out, and it clearly wasn’t the kind of book the Regents knew anything about even if it was. But if I was called on it, I could take my copies of Fantastic and show people I wasn’t making things up.
For sake of simplicity, I say I’ve read Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, when in reality I read about the first 1/4th of it before getting sidetracked and losing it to a packed box somewhere two moves ago.
I’m going to have to go with the Bible, and I claimed to have done so to shut a religionist up during an argument. I’ve tried, but other than some exceptional passages, it’s very dull and poorly written.
I have only ever lied about reading one book and that was more of a lie of omission. It was a highly fictionalized autobiography of a jazz player that I was assigned for a college lit class. I could not make myself get past chapter four. I really couldn’t see the literary value in reading about some idiot bragging about how many women he’s banged in his life (Starting at the tender age of 12; she was 14, of course.) I fudged my way through class discussions (which BTW only verified that I was correct in my original assessment of the book,) made myself familiar with characters and “plot,” and counted myself lucky that the professor allowed us to choose which essay questions we would write on for our final. I skipped every question I could about it and managed to pull off a respectable A for the final and the class.
I did confess in the anonymous professor review at the end of the semester. I have no doubt he would have been able to guess which student skipped that particular assigned reading. I had had him as a professor in a previous class and we knew each other pretty well by then.
I once told two Mormon missionaries that I’d read the Book of Mormon, thinking it would make them leave me alone. But it had the opposite effect.
I said to someone that I’d read The Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe for the same reason (I’d only listened to it on the radio). It also had the same effect. :(
I did that too. Mine was called the Hitcher and would’ve been a classic!
Ulysses for a uni class. I’ve since struggled through it, however I would be lying if I claimed to understsnd much of it, even with lots of footnotes.
Oh, and once when I was about 10 I read a wee bit of a book about a young girl evacuated from London to the countryside during WWII. Despite not making it beyond chapter one I completed a book review that said little more than the blurb on the back and “this book was really boring.”
Of the books on the OP’s list, I’ve read two in their entirety: “War and Peace” and “Ulysses.”
I’ve also read a huge percentage of the Bible, but hardly all of it (I have absolutely no idea what’s in the books of Micah or Obadiah, to name two).
There are no books I’ve lied about in order to impress people with my taste or intellect. Any lie I’ve told was to a teacher, to avoid getting in trouble for not reading an assignment.
