Books many people claim to have read, but haven’t
Some of these can be quite a long and tedious read
© NL Beeld
LIFESTYLE Books
The older you get, the wiser people assume you are. That’s all good and fine until they want to discuss impressive books. You know the ones: written many years ago, canonized in our culture, etched permanently into the student reading lists.
But while you panic and lie about having read whichever extremely long novel you thought you'd escaped after high school, don’t be so hard on yourself. As it turns out, a whole lot of other people are lying about having read those books too.
The books people usually lie about reading are the ones considered to be classics, the foundational literature that has changed our
world, immovable parts of the social zeitgeist. But who has time to read all those books and also read things written this decade?
Maybe you lied because you watched the movie, but we all know that doesn’t count. That being said, there are quite a few cases when the film is actually better than the book.
Sometimes you just want to read clear, easy prose, perhaps by writers who have experienced more of the same things you have. It could also be the case that these canonical books just won’t be your cup of tea! That’s a hard thing to accept, especially when you’re tens of thousands of words deep.
Few and far between are the people who have actually read all of the classics, and it’s likely they’ll be having too hard of a time keeping the plot lines and characters straight to see through your lies. And there are so many liars!
In a poll with more than 83,000 voters, hosted by Ranker, people came clean (anonymously, of course) about the books they lie about having read the most. Check out this gallery to see how you compare.
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