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On pretending to have read books

thecritic.co.uk

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Re: On pretending to have read books

#11

Post by thenerdhead »

I think Neil Postman hit this point in his arguments regarding the death of the written culture when showbiz was born in the late 1800s. The culture shifted with technology to become either a prison or a burlesque.

With the latter idea in mind, he argues that there's no solutions for these problems as most people do not believe it's a problem that needs cured and secondly it's a problem unlikely to be fixed, only to be innovated upon.

> "that [people] were laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking"

Books can be some of the highest quality sources of information in today's age. Especially titles like Postman's who had warned about these issues in the 80s building upon the work of McLuhan regarding "The medium is the message" arguing that mediums are not neutral and can have us ignoring the shifting landscape underneath our feet by unwittingly consuming junk content.

Re: On pretending to have read books

#12

Post by thenerdhead »

dimitar wrote: post #8

People ask me why I buy some many books when obviously I haven't read them all - I usually ask them if they wear all their clothes all the time. I think it is is perfectly fine not to finish a book. Or read a few chapters to see if you like it. Or skip the introductions or the notes. Or even just read the notes (I have an awesome translation of the Odyssey - the notes are more enjoyable than the poem!). I usually don…

There's a Japanese term for that; tsundoku.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsundoku

Re: On pretending to have read books

#13

Post by singlow »

kixiQu wrote: post #10

Is anyone else thrown by the lack of editing here? There are a couple things that read oddly but might just be regional wordings, but other sentences seem like they can't have passed under an editor's nose. Yikes.

I do generally get annoyed at poorly edited articles, but I didn't notice it - examples?

Re: On pretending to have read books

#14

Post by erulabs »

tapanjk wrote: post #9
karaterobot wrote: post #3

I thought for sure this essay would reference Pierre Bayard's really fun How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read . Oh well! Anyway, I think there are at least three kinds of reading. The one where you skim some reviews and read twenty pages is one of them. You can do this in order to just be able to say you've read something without putting in the "work", but you can also do this as part of a serious study of some s…

> The last one is when you read the book, then think about it, then read it again, then read about it, then keep reading it over and over for the rest of your life. Agree. Would love to see examples from people of books that fall in this category. I assume it is a short list for most people.

For me it's Nietzsche's "Thus spoke Zarathustra". I'm a different person each time I get through certain sections of that book. That said, I'm sure one of the hundreds of unread books I own is equally life changing.

Re: On pretending to have read books

#16

Post by pmyteh »

elliekelly wrote: post #6

I’d never heard of this publication before but the way this article so casually and confidently touted the importance their own literary reviews made me feel like I ought to have! I looked up their launch editorial[1] (from 2019) and it seems they’re angling to be a(n ostensibly) “middle of the road”/both sides are bad New Yorker with funding from Jeremy Hosking[2]. [1] https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/november-2019/in…

I don't read the launch editorial as 'both sides are bad', but as a challenge to what they perceive as a sloppy and pervasive left-wing 'default' opinion. The 'new orthodoxy' language is straight out of the ongoing culture war, in particular.

If they're aiming for a London Review of Books kind of space that makes sense - LRB is decidedly left wing if pretty heterodox and broad-minded - but for the political commentary space I would have thought the Spectator already covered a contrarian conservative perspective fairly well. But then I guess I'm not in their target market.

[Edit: I see they have got Toby Young on their editorial board. Definitely Conservative (as well as conservative), then.]

Re: On pretending to have read books

#17

Post by hinkley »

I’ve reread books and if some smartass had challenged me about the contents of some of them I would have probably looked a bit suspicious.

I’ve reached an age where some books I’ve kept because I’ve read twice, I have accepted that I likely won’t read a fourth time (and also running out of places to put them) so I have made the possibly foolish possibly mature choice to start Mary Kondo’ing my book collection, with a send off. Read them once more, then surrender them to a young person or the used bookstore.

The last and main series I parted with was Dune, which I started reading when the first rumors of Villeneuve’s adaptation came out. My recollection of the last three books was quite different, perhaps a reflection of how uptight I was at the first reading, where I found the whole Matre story arc to be quite salacious. The reread was a quite different experience and I’ll be curious to see what happens with Foundation, and Thad Williams.

Re: On pretending to have read books

#18

Post by lolc »

Eh, if the book is not worth the read to you, why the angst about admitting that? Sure, if your job is to read books and write critiques on them, your position may be different. Thinking of it, it should be admissible to say "I stopped reading for these reasons" even for a critic. But what can they write after that? It's not going to fill the page, is it?

Re: On pretending to have read books

#19

Post by havblue »

lolc wrote: post #18

Eh, if the book is not worth the read to you, why the angst about admitting that? Sure, if your job is to read books and write critiques on them, your position may be different. Thinking of it, it should be admissible to say "I stopped reading for these reasons" even for a critic. But what can they write after that? It's not going to fill the page, is it?

By being able to pretend that you've seen a television show you won't be left out of the conversation when it drifts towards something that people feel passionately about like Breaking Bad. With books there might be even more pressure: demonstrate your knowledge or you might not get invited for brunch next week.

Re: On pretending to have read books

#20

Post by ivad »

tapanjk wrote: post #9
karaterobot wrote: post #3

I thought for sure this essay would reference Pierre Bayard's really fun How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read . Oh well! Anyway, I think there are at least three kinds of reading. The one where you skim some reviews and read twenty pages is one of them. You can do this in order to just be able to say you've read something without putting in the "work", but you can also do this as part of a serious study of some s…

> The last one is when you read the book, then think about it, then read it again, then read about it, then keep reading it over and over for the rest of your life. Agree. Would love to see examples from people of books that fall in this category. I assume it is a short list for most people.

Notes from Underground was the book that really pulled me into Dostoevsky (after initially reading C&P and disliking it - I doubtless missed quite a lot the first time through). Definitely in that category for me.
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