How The Average Bookshelf Is Packed With 80 Books We Haven't Read In Bid To Look Clever

Mail Online:

Do your bookshelves show that you are a widely read and intelligent individual? Or is the story somewhat different?

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Comments

[c-tom]

10:58 PM on 10/08/2011

The Lord Of The Rings, Harry Potter and The Hobbit - so in England reading children's books makes you seem clever.

[TheBaffler]

11:28 PM on 10/10/2011

This childish tripe is revered as high art by American middlebrows.

[c-tom]

02:54 AM on 10/11/2011

You mean the English keep these books on their shelves to impress American middlebrows? What bizarre behavior, it's no wonder the British newspapers publish stories about it.

[Michael Clanchy]

12:28 AM on 10/08/2011

You're no you're an American idiot when you have to lie about having read "Harry Potter." It's sad when you can't even think of an important book to lie about having read.

[Nia McLean]

10:26 PM on 10/07/2011

I was a bookseller for nearly a decade (and I'm only 30), so prior to my move (for graduate school), I had an expansive library which included plenty of books I bought but never got around to reading. But, I didn't purchase a single one of them to impress anyone else. What's the point? When I was younger, I did try reading Dave Eggers' "The Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius", I thought the title was impressive and then couldn't get through it. I did the same thing with "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", which I count as one of my favorite books. I've seen the (somewhat pretentious) "books you must read to be considered relatively intelligent"lists and usually my favorite authors (J.California Cooper, Elizabeth Gilbert, Toni Morrison, etc) are absent from those lists, so....I read what I like.

[Michael Clanchy]

12:34 AM on 10/08/2011

I have absolutely no problem with placing "The Bluest Eye," "Song of Solomon," and "Paradise" among the greatest novels of the twentieth century. Talk about a Nobel well-earned.

[Nia McLean]

09:30 PM on 10/08/2011

My favorite are Beloved and Sula.

[naschkatze]

11:48 AM on 10/07/2011

Speak for yourself, HP writer. I have never read any on the 'but really want to read' list.

[gemini68]

11:16 AM on 10/07/2011

I love the Dubliners. I read it years ago when I was a teenager. I was obsessed with classic literature at the time. I read a lot of D.H. Lawrence, Henry James, James Joyce. I didn't really start reading modern literature until I was in my early twenties. I will admit that I have an extensive library full of books that I haven't gotten around to reading yet.

[naschkatze]

11:49 AM on 10/07/2011

I do too. It's because we buy things we really do want to read but we're playing catch up right now.

[gemini68]

11:56 AM on 10/07/2011

Agreed. I had to put a moratorium on book-buying until I finish the huge stack I have right now. I'm actually reading two books at the same time right now: A Feast for Crows (the fourth Game of Thrones book) and the Second book from the Hunger Game Series (that everyone told me me I HAD to read and am now thoroughly enjoying).

[Michael Clanchy]

12:30 AM on 10/08/2011

Lawrence, James, and Joyce are considered modern writers. "Modern" and "contemporary" aren't synonymous when it comes to literature.

[gemini68]

10:57 AM on 10/10/2011

You are correct. So the better term to use for my comment would be POST- modern literature.