Books We Lie About Having Read

[ProfCrash]

I got half way through the Bible and stopped. (shrugs)

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

I got half way through the Bible and stopped. (shrugs)

Don't think I've read anywhere near half of it if you base it on page number. It was more "pick and choose". There are a lot of boring parts.

[ProfCrash]

There is a book called the One Year Bible. It takes a passage from the Old Testemant, New Testemant, and the Psalms for each day of the year. They follow in order. It actually is a pretty nice way to read the Bible. Some of the Old Testment books are a real snooze. I skipped over the fmaily lineages and the like.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by winkler

A pretty high percentage of the first editions of Ulysses have many or most their pages uncut, meaning no one has ever even opened those pages, let alone read the words on them. Hemingway claimed to be a big fan, but his copy is in a library in Boston with its pages uncut after the first few chapters.

Funny story. Googling I find several variations on the same Hemingway story. Some say he only cut the last chapter, which is apparently famous for a sex scene. Here's a more generous soul who says he only left half the pages uncut.

The closest thing to real evidence I can find it this: Hemingway's Reading, 1910-1940

It's ambiguous, but one interpretation of the link above is that Hemingway had two copies of Ulysses, one an "unbound press copy," and the other an "edition . . . not in Key West."

Maybe this is the kind of story that's too good to fact check.

[VaporPunk]

Originally Posted by ebusinesstutor

I don't have the issue of feeling left out when others talk about literary works they've read because I only read good books - science fiction and fantasy.

So I leave the book snobs to their boring pursuits while I visit other worlds. Poor souls.

That's an incredibly snobby statement. Just as bad as the other "snobs"...

It doesn't have to be so "us or them". I enjoy the occasional "serious" literature, and sci-fi/fantasy. And history. I'll read what I want to and let others do the same. Life's too short and all that.

When I was in college, I lied frequently about which books I read. Now, I can't be bothered.

[Sil_liS]

[nogle]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

I got half way through the Bible and stopped. (shrugs)

I'll save you the trouble...

Spoiler:

The Devil did it.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by nogle

I'll save you the trouble...

Spoiler:

The Devil did it.

Spoiler:

With a candlestick in the desert?

[QuantumIguana]

Originally Posted by twowheels

Really? I read 1984 in high school (no lie!) and loved it so much that I anxiously rushed to read Animal Farm, which kind of turned me off. Maybe I should try again, I'm more into the political now, so maybe it'd hit me differently if I were to read it today.

I read Animal Farm in High School, and I didn't get everything the first time. One thing I didn't get was the chickens confessing and then being torn to pieces by the dogs. At the time I thought "Why did they confess? It just got them killed." I didn't understand that you could get just about anyone to confess to just about anything.

[ProfCrash]

LOL I know the ending. I am a Cultural Catholic (ie I was raised Catholic but no longer go to Church and think that the leadership of the Catholic Church really needs to join at least the 20th century if not the 21rst century.) I went to church regularly until I was 30 so the Bible has been spoiled for me.

[Barty]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

I got half way through the Bible and stopped. (shrugs)

I got to so and so begat so and so...

Of course you can't help but to have read chunks of the KJV bible. It's great literature after all. It's like Casablanca. Maybe you haven't seen the whole movie, but enough to feel like you've seen it.

[nogle]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

Spoiler:

With a candlestick in the desert?

Spoiler:

With an apple in the garden (of Eden)?

[caleb72]

In high school there were a couple of times that I wrote essays that would have implied that I had read a particular novel when I hadn't. However, had I have been asked I would probably have admitted to not reading it.

The ones I can think of are:
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy (read maybe half)

The first I would have liked to read but didn't for some reason I can't recall. The second one I stopped because it was so bloody boring. One day I may convince myself to try Hardy again, but I'm not particularly eager at this point.

More recently, there have been a couple of books I haven't finished, but I've never lied about this:
Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke

The first, I wanted to finish but was in the wrong head-space or something. I could see that it was good. The second, I'd rather drink battery acid than attempt a re-read.

[FlorenceArt]

There is no sex scene in the last chapter of Ulysses, but IMO it's the best of the book, together with the first one. And yes, I did read the whose book, believe it or not.

About the Bible, I started to read it several times (every time stupidly starting at the beginning) and gave up, but lately I have been reading, and even, incredibly, enjoying, Robert Alter's translation of the Five Books of Moses. The best part is his footnotes, I couldn't go through the book without them. This was, after all, written some 2500 years ago (give or take a couple of centuries, I am very bad at remembering dates and numbers), and it does require some explanation.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by nogle

Spoiler:

With an apple in the garden (of Eden)?

Spoiler:

That's just the prologue. The action happens in the desert.