Book of lies

[fingertrouble]

1. 1984 - George Orwell (42%)
2. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (31%)
3. Ulysses - James Joyce (25%)
4. The Bible (24%)
5. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (16%)
6. A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking (15%)
7. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie (14%)
8. In Remembrance of Things Past - Marcel Proust (9%)
9. Dreams from My Father - Barack Obama (6%)
10. The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins (6%)

Top ten of books that people have lied about reading.

interestingly i've genuinely read 1984 and although harrowing it's not like Ulysses or Brief History of Time, apparently quite hard to read.

Never lied but i let someone think i'd read Camus 'The Stranger' once...when i'd just read the first few lines, LOL. They assumed and i couldn't be bothered to correct them.

So any books you've lied about reading? i'm guessing Atlas Shrugged is going to be in there for the Americans...

Oh and saw Persepolis last night, i highly recommend it - very moving and touching, human, funny and informative about the iranian revolution and ensuing fallout of the 'glorious islamic revolution' which to Marji's family as communists/socialists was far from 'glorious' - and i suspect a lot of voices like that are silenced by the current regime.

Comments

[topher-fox.livejournal.com]

I've read 1984, damn good book. And I did read most of the bible....

(it was a really boring summer)

[bigbeard61.livejournal.com]

I think it depends on how one defines having read a book. When I say I've "read" Moby Dick when I've only read bits and pieces, am I lying? I used to teach at the school Herman Melville attended, and we had a big huge Melville festival weekend, including a marathon reading of Moby Dick, and I even read a section aloud (10 pages of Ahab sitting by himself in his cabin experiencing existential dread: what fun!). So I know the book fairly well, but I haven't read the bloody thing cover to cover, and I have no plans to.

(And in fact Melville only attended the school for two years, until his family lost their money and he had to drop out. So their claiming him as an alumnus is a bit like my saying I've read Moby Dick.)

But I have read all of #s 1, 2, 3, and 5 from this list, and significant portions of #s 4 and 8.

[shaggycub.livejournal.com]

Actually, with Ayn Rand, if I'd read her, I'd probably lie and said I hadn't. I have no desire to read her. While I'm not even close to the best read in the world, I've felt I'm well read enough that I don't have to lie. For example, while at Boston Conservatory, I had to read about half of the collected works of Shakespeare and analyze them in class-which is far more than most people have read. I've not read Melville's "Moby Dick", but I've read both Hugo's "Les Mis" and "Hunchback"-which are also very long and occasionally tedious. I have not read any of the titles you mentioned cover to cover. Of course, being a recovering Catholic I have read The Bible, but I do not claim to have read it cover to cover.