Never had,whats the point?
I skipped the 80-page radio rant by John Galt. I enjoyed the rest of the book but Rand seriously stacked the deck to make the good guys be always right and the bad guys always wrong. I think if I read it today I would not like it.
I really have read:
*
1984
The Bible* (it’s possible I skimmed some of the begets)
A Brief History of Time
Midnight’s Children
I’ve also read the first 400 pages of Ulysses. I was struggling through it and put it down one day and just never picked it up again. It was liberating. Stupid Ulysses.
The truth is, I don’t think I’ve ever lied about reading any books, except maybe a couple books in high school I kind of skimmed because I was bored (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, looking at you). I really am a fairly well-read person - a “100 books everyone should read!” meme was going around Facebook recently and I had read 81 of the books on the list - I don’t feel the need to lie.
I think it was Red Badge of Courage that I started and never finished. But I’m not sure I lied about it, just failed a test to the dismay of my teacher who thought I was her star pupil.
I don’t think I’ve done this, but it’s possible that I’ve mistakenly remembered reading all of something I haven’t read in its entirety.
However, when I was interviewing for grad school, I did run into another candidate who (after quite a few drinks) admitted to memorizing titles, authors, and summaries of books and major papers so he could drop the names to people. I felt kind of bad for him, because he seemed very insecure about it.
I actually have read all of In Remembrance of Things Past, or In Search of Lost Time, depending on the translation. Even though I read it straight through, I obtained the volumes piecemeal, so some of them have one title and the rest the other one. Took me about a year. I enjoyed it thoroughly, but it definitely won’t be included in the What books have you read at least three times? thread.
I actually like Ulysses, thought I don’t think I could have read it without the help of Giffords annotations. Once you figure out what’s going on the prose is actually pretty amazing.
I’ve probably lied about reading books in school, especially high school, when I was faking my way through an assignment. But I wouldn’t do it now, what would be the point? I’ll talk about books I haven’t read, but I’ll be honest that I haven’t read them.
She must’ve assigned you an abridged copy or something. No way you were supposed to read Moby Dick in its entirety in middle school. I was in gifted classes all throughout primary school and the toughest thing we ever did in middle school were excerpts from Shakespeare. Moby Dick is 800 of some of the most dense pages in the history of fiction. It’s beyond most adults. Hell, it’s beyond most dopers.
I remember reading an abridged version of Great Expectations in 9th grade English. I’ve never read the real thing to this day.
I think most people who read books in middle and high school read the abridged versions and don’t even realize it.
I don’t lie about reading books (or about not having read them). I’ve bullshitted my way through exams for things I haven’t read, but I never claimed to have actually cracked the damn things open.
FWIW, I have read 1984, I’ve started *Ulysses *a couple of times but keep getting sidetracked (or, before I had my own copy, the owner needed it back), I’ve read most of *The Bible *at one point or another, and Midnight’s Children is one of my favorites. *Madame Bovary *I honestly can’t remember one way or the other–leaning towards “it was a required or optional text at some point in high school or college, but I may not have actually read any of it.”
To impress others about one’s erudition. Similar to why people lie or exaggerate on their résumés.
Another thought is that I can’t imagine why anyone would lie about Midnight’s Children, easily one of my favorite books of all time. You should just read it! It’s such a great book.
/gratuitous recommendation
Come to think of it, I read what must have been a severely abridged version of Moby Dick in about 6th grade–on my own, not as an assignment. It was in the class “library.” I’m not sure if I read the entire thing even so. I have read Moby Dick as an adult. The boring parts–where Melville devotes entire chapters to the anatomy of the whale–were actually some of the most enjoyable for me. But then, I was a biology major!
I lied to a teacher that I hadn’t read “The Naked Ape” about man as one of nature’s species. He was a churchy creationist and sternly advised me not to buy when he saw me eying it at the PTA book sale. He later asked if I’d bought it and I lied that I hadn’t.
Pretty much every book that I was supposed to read in junior high school and high school, with a couple of exceptions (notably: Catcher in the Rye).
The class – as it was explained to us – was “an experiment”. They took a dozen of us who had the highest grades in reading, and basically ran us through a literary grinder. Moby Dick was where I called it quits, as did most of the class.
I still don’t know if they look at the “experiment” as a failure, or as successful gauge as to where the “don’t assign this book to a 12-year-old” line is.
As to the specific edition, I couldn’t say. It was a paperback, it had a red cover, and its remnants now reside somewhere at the bottom of the Metedeconk River.
I’ve done this too. I had just finished reading a book that was apparently an Oprah book club pick. I didn’t want anyone to think I read the book because Oprah recommended it, so I told a few people I hadn’t read it when they asked me. I can’t remember the book or why it had come up in conversation.
Of the list in the OP I know I read 1984 back in high school but I wouldn’t be able to tell you anything about it today. Didn’t read any of the others and I’ve never even heard of the last four on the list.
Dreams from My Father is Barack Obama’s memoir.
:smack:
Considering the fact that I followed the election very closely and was an early supporter of Obama I feel really stupid that I didn’t know that. I knew he had written a book of course, but I thought it was called something else.