20 Books People Pretend to Read (and Now Your Confessions?)

hon­est to god, i’ve nev­er faked read­ing a book. no need. i just flat out say, “naw, i haven’t read it b/c i did­n’t want to”. in that cat­e­go­ry: moby dick, pride and prej­u­dice, most of dick­ens, lord of the rings, and f’in har­ry pot­ter.

The Faerie Queene

I don’t fake read­ing books. All sum­mer I’ve been get­ting these lists: “how many of these classics/Young Adult favorites/etc. books have you read.” I don’t exag­ger­ate, even if I’ve read most of it (like the Bible) or seen the movie. For one thing, I have a death­ly fear of the humil­i­a­tion of being found out. For anoth­er, every­body I knows I read so much and so broad­ly — per­son­al­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly — that I don’t have any­thing to prove.

Per­haps if you read Dublin­ers @ John Conol­ley you might gain an appre­ci­a­tion for Joyce. To dis­miss him so read­i­ly is to deprive your­self of the plea­sure of read­ing a giant of the lit­er­ary world, in any lan­guage or era.

I haven’t lied about read­ing any of them, but I will con­fess my thoughts on them.

01. Pride and Prej­u­dice by Jane Austen
02. Ulysses by James Joyce
03. Moby-Dick by Her­man Melville
04. War and Peace by Leo Tol­stoy
05. The Bible
06. 1984 by George Orwell
07. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
08. The Great Gats­by by F. Scott Fitzger­ald
09. Anna Karen­i­na by Leo Tol­stoy
10. Catch­er in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
11. Infi­nite Jest by David Fos­ter Wal­lace
12. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
13. To Kill a Mock­ing­bird by Harp­er Lee
14. Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James
15. Jane Eyre by Char­lotte Bronte
16. Crime and Pun­ish­ment by Fyo­dor Dos­to­evsky
17. Wuther­ing Heights by Emi­ly Bronte
18. Great Expec­ta­tions by Charles Dick­ens
19. Har­ry Pot­ter (series) by J.K. Rowl­ing
20. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dick­ens (21 men­tions)

01 — read it — much bet­ter book than I thought it would be and I actu­al­ly liked it.
02 — have read tiny bits of it, which is why I haven’t read it. If I ever decide to do pey­ote for the first time, I’ll bring it on the trip.
03 — read it — real­ly liked it, but I could­n’t write a paper on it and get into all the “deprav­i­ty of man” sym­bol­ism, etc. Thought it was a kick ass book about some whacked out peo­ple stuck in an inter­coursed-up sit­u­a­tion with an obsessed mani­ac. Have it on my shelf.
04 — tried to read it once and, in the mood I was in at the time, was bored out of my skull before I got five pages in. May give it anoth­er chance with a dif­fer­ent mood.
05 — read more than once, some bits more than oth­ers. Have actu­al­ly stud­ied it a bit and dug into the orig­i­nal lan­guage of the New Tes­ta­ment. I think it should be part of any col­lege lev­el west­ern lit class, since with­out a work­ing knowl­edge of the Bible, you’ll miss most of the allu­sions in most of west­ern lit­er­a­ture. Have it on my shelf.
06 — read it way more than once. One of my favorites. Try to avoid room 101. (And why isn’t “Brave New World” on this list? Because no one would lie about read­ing it since we’ve all read it?)
07 — read it more than any of the oth­ers. Took a name from it, used it at more than one job. Hell, I know the names of the Tow­ers of the Teeth.
08 — haven’t read it. Nev­er cared to. Had a mild inter­est in it gen­er­at­ed by the recent movie, but thought it sil­ly to read a book because a movie had been made of it and bought the Ban­di­ni quar­tet by John Fante instead.
09 — famil­iar with the sto­ry line, but haven’t read it. Liked the mod­ern movie. Maybe I have a prob­lem with Tol­stoy’s works in gen­er­al?
10 — one of the few books I haven’t read, but real­ly think I should. Not sure what I’m wait­ing for.
11 — nev­er heard of it.
12 — loved it. Used the name of the main char­ac­ter as my user name on an IRC chan­nel back when I was access­ing the web with a 2400 baud modem.
13 — I think I read it, maybe not. It’s kind of fuzzy.
14 — unin­ter­est­ed.
15 — read it and thought it was an inter­est­ing sto­ry, but too far over­board, like “Love in the Time of Cholera” (which I haven’t read, but can tell it’s over­wrought from see­ing the pre­view of the movie).
16 — a fan­tas­tic book. Read this one many times — more than any oth­er Dos­toyevsky nov­el. It’s great.
17 — nev­er read. Nev­er cared.
18 — know the sto­ry but nev­er cared to read it. If you’re talk­ing Dick­ens, “A Tale of Two Cities” is my favorite.
19 — um, yeah — why in hell would any­one pre­tend to have read this? I can under­stand admit­ting that you read it, but pre­tend­ing?
20 — anoth­er real­ly great book I’ve read time and time again. Syd­ney Car­ton is the only char­ac­ter in great clas­sic lit­er­a­ture I real­ly iden­ti­fied with and thought I could be, giv­en the time and place.

In fact I just lied about hav­ing read A Man With­out Qual­i­ties. I haven’t. It’s real­ly long!

I’ve been pre­tend­ing to read David Fos­ter Wallaces“s Infi­nite Jest for four sum­mers in a row. I’ve made it to page 96.

I’ve tried to read Vir­gini­a’s Orlan­do 2 times and I can’t seem to “swim” with it. Please, help. Am I not nor­mal?

Grav­i­ty’s Rain­bow. I would­n’t real­ly say I faked it; I turned every page and read every word, but with zero com­pre­hen­sion or enjoy­ment. This was over 10 years ago when I forced myself to fin­ish every book I start­ed, think­ing there would be some kind of rev­e­la­tion by the end. After that expe­ri­ence, I now walk away from a book when­ev­er I get the feel­ing I might be wast­ing pre­cious min­utes of my life on some­thing that will bring me no plea­sure or insight.

…but I can’t seem to keep myself from pre­tend­ing to have read Ulysses, even though I read only about one fourth of it. Have actu­al­ly read Dublin­ers and Young man, and loved these!

I am not ashamed of say­ing I only made it to page 550 of Infi­nite Jest. After my sui­cide attempt, I could­n’t bring myself to fin­ish it.

And Joseph Heller. I have start­ed Catch-22 more times than I have start­ed any­thing in my life. I give up.

I have car­ried Uly­sees around faith­ful­ly but I have yet to fin­ish it and now I can’t remem­ber where I was.

I’ve nev­er faked read­ing a book, but I thought it was inter­est­ing that while I gen­uine­ly have read #s 6–10 of the big list, the top five con­sists of two I’ve tried to get through mul­ti­ple times before giv­ing up in frus­tra­tion, two I’m just open­ly intim­i­dat­ed by their “dense” rep­u­ta­tion, and one I just tore through one week­end on a whim as a sort of con­text for the Zom­bie ver­sion that I was real­ly inter­est­ed in read­ing, yet nev­er got around to.

Also, I was sur­prised to see 50 Shades on this list, rather than a list of books peo­ple pre­tend they *haven’t* read.

I did­n’t know that there was such a thing as fake read­ing. But what does it mean? Peo­ple sit­ting with a book stack on their face just to show off or some­thing (as per pic)? Or that they say they have read such and such books which they have nev­er done?

Also, I own a copy of the first edi­tion of the Amer­i­can edi­tion of Ulysses only because it’s my favorite book cov­er design.

I’m with Rebec­ca. I read so many books in so many gen­res, I feel guilty that I haven’t read some of the clas­sics. I HAVE read “Pride and Prej­u­dice;” too many times to count actu­al­ly. I’m always read­ing the Bible and I haven’t ever picked up the oth­ers. How­ev­er, I did start “Uncle Tom’s Cab­in” 2 years ago and still haven’t fin­ished it!

Grav­i­ty’s Rain­bow

I did read a few all the way through. 1984, CITR, TKAM, LOTR (but I skipped over the songs). I read Har­ry Pot­ter, out loud to my daugh­ter (yes all of them.) She loved when I did Dob­by’s voice (not like the movie, more like Yoda talk­ing for­ward with and Urdu accent).

Catch-22 was hilar­i­ous, but for some rea­son I just put it down and moved on with­out fin­ish­ing.

Jane Austen and the Brontes were… well…I gnawed off my arm and escaped.

As for the rest of them, I just know a few pas­sages that make me look smart when I quote them. If some­one engages me in a deep­er dis­cus­sion about those, I spill a drink on myself and run away.

In hind­sight I wish I had faked read­ing some of them rather than actu­al­ly wast­ing my pre­cious time.

I’ve read a few sto­ries in The Dublin­ers. It remind­ed me of Buscemi’s movie “Trees Lounge”, a slice of life that does­n’t give a defin­i­tive end­ing. Rather, you get the real world sense that life goes on. I think it’s great to broad­en your hori­zons through lit­er­a­ture. How­ev­er, form your own opin­ion on books rather than rely­ing on some­one else’s opin­ion. And don’t con­tin­ue any book that does­n’t meet your needs in some­way.

I have read #1 and # 5 on the list in their entire­ty. I have read the New Tes­ta­ment more than once too, and I am not “an athe­ist” after hav­ing read the Bible all of the way through either. I have not read any of the oth­ers and I flat out refuse to read Moby Dick. I will one day read War and Peace. I like the Russ­ian writ­ers.

Well i’ve read 5/6 books out­ta this list. I nev­er want­ed to read lords of the rings. And i think many pple fakes read­ing Har­ry Pot­ter. Bible i haven’t read but intend to read it along w/ Al Qur’an.

War & Peace is not dif­fi­cult at all, nor is it bor­ing (well, except for a few short parts). I’ve read it 5 times. Real­ly. I high­ly rec­om­mend the trans­la­tion by Pevear & Volokhon­sky. It’s faith­ful to the orig­i­nal and has a lot of help­ful anno­ta­tions. DO NOT READ the Con­stance Gar­nett trans­la­tion! That’s what start­ed the inac­cu­rate ‘bor­ing and dif­fi­cult’ bad rap.

I’ve read Joyce’s ULYSSES and enjoyed it. Haven’t read any of the the oth­er four.

The whale tale… nnI was sup­posed to read it in high school, but did­n’t. By read­ing a two or three para­graph sum­ma­ry of the plot, I man­aged to pass the test. nn“Moby Dick­n­Makes me sickn­But it sure does makenOld Lady [name with­held — the Eng­lish teacher ] tick.“nnDecades lat­er, when I was home­school­ing my son, I bor­rowed the book on tape from the library to lis­ten to dur­ing a long car trip. I expect­ed to lis­ten to a chap­ter or two before becom­ing bored and switch­ing to a dif­fer­ent book on tape. So I was sur­prised to be enchant­ed by the book, and stunned that I par­tic­u­lar­ly enjoyed the long pas­sages about whales, which is what I could­n’t get past when I was in high school. For­tu­nate­ly, my son liked the book, too. We lis­tened to the entire book.nnPrior to lis­ten­ing to the Moby Dick on tape, I would occa­sion­al­ly have a night­mare that I had nev­er grad­u­at­ed from high school, that my col­lege degree was invalid and/or my employ­er had found out and was fir­ing me. Lis­ten­ing to Moby Dick seemed to sat­is­fy my brain that I had final­ly fin­ished high school. I haven’t had that night­mare since.

I lied about read­ing your arti­cle — I skipped straight to the comments.nDidn’t read most of those either…

For heav­ens sake NOT Pride and Prej­u­dice please in this list. Peo­ple are read­ing it, PROOF we have six dif­fer­ent prints/editions in our mar­ket even.

My con­fes­sion… hmm­mm, prob­a­bly, maybe when I was real­ly young, but had to be younger than when I was in 2nd grade. After sec­ond grade, and in sec­ond grade at most, I real­ly start­ed to get into read­ing. Although, I have read a chil­dren’s bible, when I was a kid, and I start­ed to read the real thick, long adult bible. As far as I got into that, I did actu­al­ly loose inter­est.

And when I read now, if I ever zone out and catch myself. I read the last two pages again, no mat­ter what. Also, if I stop read­ing for a day, and pick it up the next day, I take off a page behind than where I stopped to remem­ber clear­ly.