20 Books You Pretend to Have Read

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I have only read 7 on the list, but I have read some multiple times. I like Jane Austen. I love Tolkien. The only Dickens I have read is David Copperfield and the Christmas Carol. I have read Harry Potter at least 2 times (I know that some people think it’s horrible) but I think it has a great message for children.
 
Ulysses by James Joyce
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
1984 by George Orwell
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

I’ve only read the above.
 
I’m very guilty of faking my knowledge of “A Tale of Two Cities”. I’ve read the Great Illustrated Classics version and listed to an excellent BBC dramatization to fill in the not so kid friendly bits (namely Jerry Cruncher beating his religious wife). I love the story. I’ve written school papers about the book. I’ve aced tests about the book.

I’ve never actually read the book past the first chapter.
 
Kit15 said:
I’m very guilty of faking my knowledge of “A Tale of Two Cities”. I’ve read the Great Illustrated Classics version and listed to an excellent BBC dramatization to fill in the not so kid friendly bits (namely Jerry Cruncher beating his religious wife). I love the story. I’ve written school papers about the book. I’ve aced tests about the book.

I’ve never actually read the book past the first chapter.
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I loved Great Illustrated Classics as a kid!
 
Why pretend to have read these books anymore? Sure, I get pretending in school so you don’t flunk, but now?

85 mentions of Pride and Prejudice? That is a good book! You need only check my profile to see good ol’ Moby listed there as a favorite of mine. I liked Anna Karenina too. I am so glad no one forced me to read things like this in school. When you want to read them, they are awesome. Why ruin literature for people by forcing it down their throats?

Maybe Scarlet Letter is good too, but I’ll never know since it is forever tainted by high school.
 
Want to read in blue. Not sure in black. Don’t want to read in red. Have read in green.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Ulysses by James Joyce
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Bible
1984 by George Orwell
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Harry Potter (series) by J.K. Rowling
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

I am woefully under-read 😊. Actually, though, my current “to-read” list is:

Divine Comedy by Dante (just finished Conto III of Inferno)
Les Miserables
Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
The Compiled Fictions of Jorge Luis Borges (and maybe the book of poetry, too)
 
Read
Probably Will Read
Will Give it the Old College Try
Nope

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Ulysses by James Joyce
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Bible
1984 by George Orwell
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace :confused:
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Harry Potter (series) by J.K. Rowling
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Maybe because I’m older than most of you, I don’t have that distaste for literature that I am sensing from some posters. With the exception of 1984, I read the above books because I wanted to or because I was curious. My father was a wonderful man and while he did not go to college (the Depression), he was well-read. Often, he would buy books and bring them home to me after work because he thought that I would like them. He introduced me to wonderful books, including the Russians, whom I love. He gave me a copy of *The Brothers Karamazov *(I was in high school) and I was hooked. So, yes, I did read War and Peace–and Moby Dick–cover to cover. I read so many “classics” that a very good friend promised to “drag me kicking and screaming into the 20th century”. 🙂 She was–in part–successful. 🙂
 
Maybe because I’m older than most of you, I don’t have that distaste for literature that I am sensing from some posters. With the exception of 1984, I read the above books because I wanted to or because I was curious. My father was a wonderful man and while he did not go to college (the Depression), he was well-read. Often, he would buy books and bring them home to me after work because he thought that I would like them. He introduced me to wonderful books, including the Russians, whom I love. He gave me a copy of *The Brothers Karamazov *(I was in high school) and I was hooked. So, yes, I did read War and Peace–and Moby Dick–cover to cover. I read so many “classics” that a very good friend promised to “drag me kicking and screaming into the 20th century”. 🙂 She was–in part–successful. 🙂

It’s not your age. You were fortunate to have a father who instilled in you his love of literature. For many of us, in school, literature was never presented as something to be loved, but something to be studied, dissected, analyzed – much like a cadaver. My personal opinion (and your mileage may vary) is that some works considered capital-L “Literature” only remain so because they are force-fed to students at schools and universities, and if left to their own devices would wither to dust and be blown away on the wind of indifference.

Ask any Newfoundland kid who had the misfortune of reading Lure of the Labrador Wild.
 
NeedsMercy said:
Maybe because I’m older than most of you, I don’t have that distaste for literature that I am sensing from some posters. With the exception of 1984, I read the above books because I wanted to or because I was curious. My father was a wonderful man and while he did not go to college (the Depression), he was well-read. Often, he would buy books and bring them home to me after work because he thought that I would like them. He introduced me to wonderful books, including the Russians, whom I love. He gave me a copy of *The Brothers Karamazov *(I was in high school) and I was hooked. So, yes, I did read War and Peace–and Moby Dick–cover to cover. I read so many “classics” that a very good friend promised to “drag me kicking and screaming into the 20th century”. 🙂 She was–in part–successful. 🙂
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It’s not your age. You were fortunate to have a father who instilled in you his love of literature. For many of us, in school, literature was never presented as something to be loved, but something to be studied, dissected, analyzed – much like a cadaver. My personal opinion (and your mileage may vary) is that some works considered capital-L “Literature” only remain so because they are force-fed to students at schools and universities, and if left to their own devices would wither to dust and be blown away on the wind of indifference.

Ask any Newfoundland kid who had the misfortune of reading Lure of the Labrador Wild.
 
didymus said:
20 Books You Pretend to Have Read

Let’s say “people pretend to have read”. I’m sure you have.


  1. *]Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (85 mentions)
    *]Ulysses by James Joyce
    *]Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
    *]War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
    *]The Bible
    *]1984 by George Orwell
    *]The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
    *]The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
    *]Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
    *]Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
    *]Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
    *]Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
    *]To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
    *]Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James
    *]Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
    *]Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
    *]Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
    *]Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
    *]Harry Potter (series) by J.K. Rowling
    *]A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (21 mentions)

    I don’t even bother to claim I’ve read most of these & I suspect most of the people who have read them have done so under duress (for school).
    I suspect most people who claim to have read the Bible straight thru from Genesis to Revelation are liars, esp. atheists who claim reading the Bible as a reson for quitting their belief in God.

    As for Russian novels, the Brontes & Joyce they’re all an acquired taste by why bother acquire it?
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  1. I have read 1, 3, most of 5, 6, 7, some of 8, 15, 18, and am working on 19 right now. Of those, only two were for school (8 and 18). And I did indeed pretend that I had read all of 8, when I really just gave up due to a stressful workload. 😦

    Granted, only some of those others were for personal enjoyment. I had a deal going with my mom for a while that for every classic book I read, she would buy me an Orson Scott Card novel. Later, we did another deal where every time I read a ‘classic’ book, she would read a volume of manga. It gave us a lot of stuff to discuss on both sides, and I’m quite glad I read the works I did (as painful as it was to get through Moby Dick as a high school freshman!).

    However- The Lord of the Rings, Pride and Prejudice, and 1984 were awesome books that I read because I could read them, and they did not disappoint. 😃
 
Read half of 2 & 4 (Ulysses, War/Peace)
Have no interest in 14 or 19 (50Shades, HarryPotter)
Have not read Jane Eyre, but just saw Zefirelli’s film and want to read it now (also 'cause gracepoole is one of my favorite CAF posters 🙂
The others I have actually, really read
 
Of these, I heartily recommend:
Moby-Dick
Catcher in the Rye
Crime and Punishment
Great Expectations

The others I half-heartedly recommend.
 
Bonnie said:
but I’ve never even heard of #11 - by title or author.
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Infinite Jest is a fantastic novel; among the mighty overrated modern/postmodern epics (Ulysses, Underworld, Gravity’s Rainbow) I find it the only one that truly satisfies.

You have to be sort-of interested in postmodernism though…
 
mafh said:
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (I love his essays… now I want to try his fiction)
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Might I suggest The Broom of the System? It is pretty good, and you can get your DFW feet wet without having to commit to 1200 pages
 
Wonder why so many people seem to equate Harry Potter with Fifty Shades of Gray.
 
Sailor_Kenshin said:
Wonder why so many people seem to equate Harry Potter with Fifty Shades of Gray.
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Yeah… Maybe it’s just that the people who have read a lot of the other books tend to be outside the age range that Harry Potter is aimed at? It’s probably not that they think they’re both immoral, just that the people who read War and Peace are unlikely to read and enjoy children’s fantasy literature. 🤷
 
epiclotus said:
The Compiled Fictions of Jorge Luis Borges (and maybe the book of poetry, too)
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Ooo… I only just discovered Jorge Luis Borges and I just loved him! I read several of the stories from his Labyrinths collection. I especially liked “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” and “The Library of Babel”. I got interested in him after reading Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, which is about as Catholic a novel as you could wish for, plus it’s an engaging murder mystery. Highly recommended.
 
Allegra said:
I loved Great Illustrated Classics as a kid!
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Is that the same as the Classics Illustrated comic books? One of my great-aunts gave me the Wuthering Heights one as a kid, and that’s what started me loving the Bronte sisters. I read the comic book first at 12 or 13, and then I must have read the actual book 5 or 6 times. I still have the comic in my keepsake box.
 
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