Wow, that’s too bad. Both books are at their best at the end. The Book of Revelation, in particular, makes for oddly riveting reading, and Winston’s conversations with O’Brien, culminating with his ordeal in Room 101, is the whole point of 1984.
I’ve never lied about reading a book, but I have sat through many discussions about books I’ve never read. I find it tedious when books are assigned, and I was rarely able to plow my way through them. I get the sense that teachers frequently assign books to read because they think they should assign so-called “classics”, when in fact those books are typically brutally boring and anything but.
I lied about Grapes of Wrath. It was my senior year of college, I had a lot of demanding classes… and my mom ended up having emergency surgery while my class was reading Grapes. I laid my priorities out… internship, portfolio, literature class I actually liked, philosophy classes I actually loved, and … Literary Themes: Famine, Drought and Humanity. That one got the boot. Between Cliffs Notes and class discussions, I got through.
War and Peace is probably easy to lie about, because even if you had read it you’d be unlikely to want to talk about it. What was my favorite part? Oh, I’d say the peace.
I thought “War and Peace” was a gripping page-turner. In fact, the ONLY part that bored me was Tolstoy’s second postscript, which belabors every point he’d made much more effectively and subtly over the course of the novel.
I honestly can’t remember if I read 1984 all the way through or if I skipped or skimmed parts. The only books on that list I know I’ve read cover to cover are Ulysses (repeatedly) and The Selfish Gene.
That was my thought. I’m not going to lie about having read a book, and then stand there with a dumb look on my face, stammering “Uh, ohm… yeah,” when you start talking about it. I’ve never lied about reading a book, unless you consider writing a paper on a book I’ve never read lying. Sure, I wrote the paper, but I never claimed I read the book.
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad. Foisted by a clueless sadistic new teacher who actually thought a bunch of working-class goombahs would have a clue…no one, including me, read the thing. Not because we just didn’t wanna, but we couldn’t! We had no clue as to who, what, when, where, or why. Out of all the books out there…well, the whole class got an ‘F’.
I redeemed mysself by writing a 10 page report on Life In The Middle Ages, complete with illustrations.
The majority of books assigned in my college literature classes. How I faked my way through exams I’ll never know. I felt guilty later, and read a few of them, like Lolita.
If writing a paper on a book you didn’t read counts, then many, many times. In undergraduate school I read approximately half of the assigned readings.
Other than that, I haven’t lied, but I’ve implied I’ve read books that I never actually finished. I frequently tell others that Doubt: A History, Moral Minds, and Lies My Teacher Told Me are phenomenal books, and I do maintain that they are, but technically I never finished them.
The King in Yellow, The Necronomicon, The Book of Eibon, The Book of Skelos.
I mean, I don’t want to go batshit insane. But I don’t want the other Horr-Geeks to think I’m a wimp or anything. So every now and then I act just a little weird, and say it’s from demon-book flashbacks.
I have no freaking idea why the english profession worships Hemingway - I find him about the most unreadable jerk around [all he mainly did was fictionalize crap that happened to him in a vague sort of way. my god, an accident in Africa bungs him up, he writes about a guy dying of gangreen in Africa wondering why there is a freaking dead leopard most of the way up the mountian. Jumping Jebus … ]
And why the hell did my WYSIWYG word processing program on the amiga compare all my damn writing to a hemingway piece for style or whatever? If I want to write in a passive voice, deal with it … stupid box of electrons.
Moby Dick. I was supposed to read it and give an oral report on it in Sister Mary Arthur’s 6th grade AP English class. Any idea how hard it is to to an oral report on a book you haven’t read? There’s only so many ways you can stammer “It’s about a whale…and…ummm…” before people start to catch on.
By the by, how is it possible that Lord Of The Rings hasn’t been mentioned? I wouldn’t expect anyone here to lie about it, but I thought it’d certainly be on the list provided by the OP. I figured that with the popularity of the movies, there would be a ton of people who might’ve wanted to read it, but figured “'Eh…saw the movie, good enough”.
As for the Bible, I typically skipped “the begats” as well as parts of Paul’s letters, but much of it was decent reading. It certainly saved my sanity while sitting through interminable sermons in church, and so I’ve cumulatively read it multiple times. And I agree, the Book of Revelation is pretty wild in parts and I can see why it’s inspired all of this Tribulation/Armageddon fiction.