Pretend Reading

Bookriot has published a list, complete with a handy Venn diagram, of books people lie about having read, along with books they wish they’ve read.

(Both they, and I, were a little surprised that Pride & Prejudice topped both lists.  It’s not as if comprehending the adventures of Miss Elizabeth Bennett require knowledge of post-structuralist theory, now does it?  I mean, you want to read it, just read it, it’s not that hard, honestly.)

And people pretend to read 50 Shades of Grey.  If I’d read it, I’d pretend I hadn’t.

But what interested me is that people pretend to have read books.  I mean, why?  It’s not like you get shunned if you haven’t read Moby-Dick.  Even in grad school, I’d imagine.

I don’t think I’ve ever pretended to have read something I haven’t— even if I had the inclination, the fact is that I run with a literate crowd, and I’d be found out.  It’s barely possible that I might have claimed to have finished something I hadn’t, but I doubt even that.

I suppose that for English class, people might claim to have read a book when they’d only done the Cliff Notes. But outside of that?

So I’m curious.  If you’ve pretended to have read a book, and it wasn’t a reading assignment in class, why did you do it?

As far as the list goes, I’ve done pretty well at actually reading books that other people only claim to have read.  I haven’t read Fifty Shades, The Catcher In the Rye, Gone With the Wind, and 100 Years of Solitude.   I have started (but failed to finish) Crime and Punishment, Infinite Jest, Anna Karenina (liked War & Peace, though), In Search of Lost Time (couldn’t get past Chapter One), and the Bible. (Has anyone noticed that the people in the Bible are crazy???  There’s only so much time I can spend around deranged people.)

How about y’all?  And what tops your list of books you want to read but haven’t?