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On pretending to have read books

thecritic.co.uk

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Re: On pretending to have read books

#41

Post by singlow »

Renevith wrote: post #26
singlow wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm not the person you replied to, but this stood out to me: "And so (sorry, Orwell, but my guilt is too great to avoid the passive voice) certain strategies have evolved." This sentence isn't in the passive voice. ("Have been evolved" would be.) I would expect a good editor to be a grammar expert and catch that error.

Agreed, syntactically. However, it is passive in that the strategies aren't actually the actors. The word _evolved_ has a general passive use while actually retaining the active voice syntactically. The actual passive voice version you gave is not normal usage. The author is the actor who has developed strategies, but he is dodging the responsibility by making the strategies be the subject of the sentence and leaving himself out.

Re: On pretending to have read books

#42

Post by swayvil »

havblue wrote: post #21
swayvil wrote: post #5

To be fair, reading a book and engaging in a conversation about a book are two utterly different bags. And engaging in a conversation about a book is often way more fun. And shifting gears between the two modes is difficult. So you really can't blame people for faking it.

I've noticed that Wheel of Time can be very fun to complain about: the plot goes nowhere fast, there's too much gender war dialogue, too many characters are belligerent idiots. But people still read it and talk about it, passionately. So it's still somehow engaging despite or maybe even because of the flaws.

In my age and wisdom I find that I can't get through a even a quarter of what I read these days. At best. 29 times out of 30.

I throw it aside exclaiming, "what crap!".

If it weren't for free blackmarket epubs I would have wasted a fortune.

Where have all the good sci fi writers gone?

Re: On pretending to have read books

#43

Post by mightybyte »

> Now, over ten trillion new titles hit the shelves every month in Young Adult fiction alone.

Say what? Ten trillion? That doesn't strike me as plausible. Which raises the question...what is the correct number? Ten billion new titles per month doesn't sound plausible either. Ten thousand sounds more reasonable. Maybe ten million but that seems like stretching it.

Re: On pretending to have read books

#44

Post by Izkata »

> Tellingly the first download was The Complete Works of Shakespeare — the next, one of the original bluffer’s guides, by Charles Lamb. His abridgments were good enough for James Joyce, who based Ulysses on Lamb’s filleting of Homer. Would the masterpiece of modernism have been any better, more highly esteemed — or more readable — if he’d actually read The Odyssey first, instead of just getting the gist? I doubt it.

I know of a modern version of this: When K. A. Applegate was writing Everworld, she mentioned in an interview that whenever she wanted to introduce a new god or mythology, she made a point to never read the actual myths/stories and instead just get an overview. That way she wouldn't get stuck on how the various mythological characters were previously written and would be able to fit their abilities and personalities into the books, while still grounding them in what how the myths portrayed them.

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

Re: On pretending to have read books

#45

Post by quercusa »

technothrasher wrote: post #32
marc_abonce wrote: post #29

Funnily enough, pretending to read a book will almost always make you better at these conversations than actually reading the book. This is something I learned the hard way back in school. Whenever I actually read the book/chapter/article I would almost invariably do way worse on the quiz or essay compared to when I "cheated" by only reading a couple of summaries or reviews. In fact, I really enjoyed reading Eco's Na…

The best grade on a book essay I got in High School was for a book that didn't even exist. We were supposed to read a book of our choosing and write about it. I couldn't be bothered (ok, ok, I wasn't the best student), so I just made one up and the teacher commented that it was the best essay in the class. As an adult, I've now read a lot of the classics I was supposed to have read in High School, and wish I could go…

>wish I could go back and tell my knucklehead past self to just read them, as they are actually very good.

I doubt it would have done any good. There's so much in those great books that teenagers won't appreciate. You might read Moby Dick at that age and think it's a just story about a guy chasing a whale, with a lot of digressions.

Re: On pretending to have read books

#46

Post by ivad »

berlinquin wrote: post #27
ivad wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man." A good hook, but I had a tough time finishing Notes. The narrator really shows that yes, he is in fact a sick and spiteful man. Not one I'd want to pick up again. I got pulled into Dostoyevsky through Brothers K, which led me to Notes eventually. Do you know what translation of Notes you read? I think I read P&V, and if I read it again I'd want to try something else

I've read Garnett and P&V and personally much prefer the Garnett translation!

A nice comparison: https://web.archive.org/web/20131109182920/http://comparetra...

Re: On pretending to have read books

#47

Post by jasone »

StormChaser_5 wrote: post #36
sneak wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mine (predictably): 1984 Stranger In A Strange Land The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress Time Enough For Love Friday The Crying Of Lot 49 Seveneves Neuromancer I’ve read all of these at least 4 times, with reading-about-them in between. I usually pick one up to re-read just a part of it, then I get sucked in and before I know it I’ve re-read the whole thing.

Have you tried "The player of games"? Based on the others you have there you might like it.

I've read eight of the Culture novels now, and "The Player of Games" was in the bottom two for me. I'm mystified that most others seem to rank this book so high. "Use of Weapons" and "Surface Detail" are my favorites so far, but they're rarely mentioned here.

Re: On pretending to have read books

#48

Post by bryanrasmussen »

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…

maybe should mention Pierre Menard who wrote a famous book he hadn't read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Menard,_Author_of_the_Q...

Re: On pretending to have read books

#49

Post by neilv »

swayvil wrote: post #42
havblue wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed that Wheel of Time can be very fun to complain about: the plot goes nowhere fast, there's too much gender war dialogue, too many characters are belligerent idiots. But people still read it and talk about it, passionately. So it's still somehow engaging despite or maybe even because of the flaws.

In my age and wisdom I find that I can't get through a even a quarter of what I read these days. At best. 29 times out of 30. I throw it aside exclaiming, "what crap!". If it weren't for free blackmarket epubs I would have wasted a fortune. Where have all the good sci fi writers gone?

If there weren't black market epubs, would that be one component to market forces doing their thing for high-quality content?

Related example, on a different factor: yesterday, I paid $51 for a nonfiction non-DRM .epub form of a book that was also available for $27 in ereader-specific DRM form. Had I instead pirated the book, that wouldn't have contributed to publisher incentive to offer non-DRM form, but that presumably would've contributed to the publisher wanting hard DRM lockdown.

(Or, I suppose, might've contributed to the publisher focusing on other factors than high quality, such as large volume, to bring it back to the earlier question?)

Re: On pretending to have read books

#50

Post by robocat »

quercusa wrote: post #45
technothrasher wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best grade on a book essay I got in High School was for a book that didn't even exist. We were supposed to read a book of our choosing and write about it. I couldn't be bothered (ok, ok, I wasn't the best student), so I just made one up and the teacher commented that it was the best essay in the class. As an adult, I've now read a lot of the classics I was supposed to have read in High School, and wish I could go…

> wish I could go back and tell my knucklehead past self to just read them, as they are actually very good. I doubt it would have done any good. There's so much in those great books that teenagers won't appreciate. You might read Moby Dick at that age and think it's a just story about a guy chasing a whale, with a lot of digressions.

> teenagers won’t appreciate

I’m middle-aged, read a lot, but Moby Duck is just about chasing a whale to me. I just don’t recognise the metaphors and deeper meanings, unless somebody with a word rotator mind explains it (or I read the Cliff’s notes - which I didn’t get either).

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