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PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
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Category: Books
Posted on: April 26, 2008 2:57 PM, by PZ Myers
John Lynch has a list of so-called pretentious books — books that are often listed as unread. Wilkins has followed up with his own. It's a curious list, though; the only ones I'd definitely call pretentious are anything by Rand, and maybe the books by Hawthorne (an author I find unpleasantly bad).
I think we already did this list last fall, however.
Comments
Gotta disagree with a few on the list that I've read (e.e. Dune pretentious? Only if well-written sci-fi is considered pretentious) but he's on the money on many of them.
Posted by: GumbyTheCat | April 26, 2008 3:04 PM
Okay, I was going down the list, privately gloating a bit that I'd read so many apparently "pretentious" books (hey, we all can have our moments of elitist smugness), when I came across this one:
Angels & Demons
Angels and Demons is pretentious? You've got to be kidding me.
Posted by: Etha Williams | April 26, 2008 3:07 PM
I am pretty sure all books except the Bible are pretentious and unnecessary!!!!!111
Haha. No, not real;y.
Posted by: Robert Ward | April 26, 2008 3:12 PM
People still read that pretentious piece of fiction called the Bible?
I don't believe it.
Posted by: CalGeorge | April 26, 2008 3:14 PM
Oh come on! This seems to be compiled by someone who doesn't like reading for pleasure. I'd like to see a list of books that he DOESN'T consider pretentious. What would that be, "Dick and Jane"?
I also notice that 19th cent lit makes up a good deal of the list. Tastes have changed, certainly, but most of those books were very widely read and popular at the time. It's anachroistic to call them pretentious. If someone wrote them NOW, maybe.
I think this list is pretentious, actually.
Posted by: madaha | April 26, 2008 3:16 PM
I mean, "anachronistic".
Posted by: madaha | April 26, 2008 3:19 PM
agree with madaha. Real pretension involves feeling superior to people who enjoy Dan Brown.
Posted by: joe | April 26, 2008 3:20 PM
Those are just often-recommended books, with a lot of assigned-in-school books among them. "The Life of Pi" is almost lowbrow.
Posted by: John Emerson | April 26, 2008 3:23 PM
These lists are idotic.
What's the criteria for pretentiousness? The guy who calls them pretentious couldn't get through them (or didn't try)?
Where's the Bible, for crying out loud? I've read it. ALL of it. Most of it doesn't even work as "literature."
It takes a lot of damn gall to leave the Bible off the list and include (just to name some of MY favorites): Crime and Punishment, The Iliad, Guns, Germs and Steel, Moby Dick, The Picture of Dorian Gray, THE HOBBIT (?!?!?! Yeah, that's REAL HARD to read! I think I was ten. Even younger when I read Watership Down) and Pride and Prejudice.
I think someone thinks "pretentious" is a synonym for "too hard for stupid people."
Posted by: Hoosier X | April 26, 2008 3:26 PM
Totally. And Jane Austen is straightforward realism - the opposite of pretentious. The subject matter may not appeal, but ....I'm wondering if this guy knows what "pretentious" actually means? or has read these books?
Posted by: madaha | April 26, 2008 3:28 PM
It's not books that are pretentious, it's authors.
Posted by: Milo Johnson | April 26, 2008 3:29 PM
These lists are idotic.
What's the criteria for pretentiousness? The guy who calls them pretentious couldn't get through them (or didn't try)?
Where's the Bible, for crying out loud? I've read it. ALL of it. Most of it doesn't even work as "literature."
It takes a lot of damn gall to leave the Bible off the list and include (just to name some of MY favorites): Crime and Punishment, The Iliad, Guns, Germs and Steel, Moby Dick, The Picture of Dorian Gray, THE HOBBIT (?!?!?! Yeah, that's REAL HARD to read! I think I was ten. Even younger when I read Watership Down) and Pride and Prejudice.
I think someone thinks "pretentious" is a synonym for "too hard for stupid people."
Posted by: Hoosier X | April 26, 2008 3:31 PM
Well, the Bible and the Iliad definitely can't be called pretentious - ancient oral culture pretentious? That doesn't even make sense.
However, I know this going to get me in trouble here, but Tolkien *could* be called pretentious, because his works are medievalizing and he makes up words.
*going to hide now*
Posted by: madaha | April 26, 2008 3:34 PM
Pretentious, as defined by the OED:
Attempting to impress by affecting greater importance or merit than is actually possessed; making an exaggerated outward display; ostentatious, showy.
Very few of these books fit that description. I think that what the list-maker was actually trying to say is that people who read these books are often being pretentious (trying to affect greater importance or merit than they possess by making an exaggerated outward display of how they've read them).
Posted by: Etha Williams | April 26, 2008 3:34 PM
Etha:
Bush reading "My Pet Goat" - definitely pretentious!
Posted by: madaha | April 26, 2008 3:37 PM
I SWEAR I got a message saying my post didn't go through.
Pinky swear even.
Posted by: Hoosier X | April 26, 2008 3:37 PM
Ah, none of you 3 has read Freakonomics, well don't bother...
Posted by: negentropyeater | April 26, 2008 3:38 PM
I am abashed that I've read only 32 of the "pretentious" books. It really should be much higher!
Posted by: Zeno | April 26, 2008 3:40 PM
The same way we make lists like this as jokes, the neo-cons make lists like this as guideposts for what their "constituents" should actually read or ignore. And these people ACTUALLY listen to them!!! I can see the day that a list like this is being read by Bill O'Reilly on Fox News, and then the entire list placed on the forbidden list, Equilibrium-style.
Oh, I'm also an English major along with being a soldier, and I had no idea I was getting such a pretentious degree! It seems like almost every book I loved (along with most of them I hated) during my college reading is on one of these lists.
Posted by: brokenSoldier | April 26, 2008 3:40 PM
If the Bible isn't pretentious then there is no reason to even have a concept of pretension.
It's the unerring and infallible word of God, for Chrissake.
Posted by: Hoosier X | April 26, 2008 3:42 PM
Ah, 'pretentious', the most pretentious word in the English language.
A word everyone love to toss like an accusation at things they don't like but no one uses correctly.
Posted by: Spinoza | April 26, 2008 3:45 PM
I've read almost 40 of them.
I'm currently reading The Wealth of Nations and William Duiker's biography of Ho Chi Minh, but I just finished Free Ride and Armed Madhouse.
Posted by: Hoosier X | April 26, 2008 3:46 PM
The list does not include the most pretentious novel of all time:
"Remembrance of Things Past" by Proust
And yes, I have read it ...
Axolotl
Posted by: Axolotl | April 26, 2008 3:52 PM
What about...
Being and time by Heidegger
Critique of pur reason by Kant
Candide by Voltaire
Thus spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche
Oh, I forgot, Philosophy is off limits.
It's definitely pretentious of me, of pretending I've understood them.
Posted by: negentropyeater | April 26, 2008 3:56 PM
"It's the unerring and infallible word of God, for Chrissake."
Oh, I always thought that it was a randomly documented collection of ancient oral culture.
(that people willfully misunderstand) So that would make the readers pretentious, not the actual work. So yes, sometimes the Bible does "quote" the voice of god, but so does the Iliad.
Posted by: madaha | April 26, 2008 3:57 PM
@#21 Spinioza --
I think the internal logic of people's use of pretentious for things they don't like (and often don't understand) goes something like this:
1. I don't like and/or understand it.
2. Therefore, it's unimportant.
3. Therefore, anyone who does profess to like or understand it is attaching exaggerated importance to an unimportant thing, and is thus being pretentious.
The real problem is the jump from one to two...correct that, and the rest of their flimsy excuse for an insult ("pretentious") falls apart.
Posted by: Etha Williams | April 26, 2008 3:58 PM
The criterion for the list was "books that people bought without reading, but didn't get rid of". "Pretentious" was an interpretation, but not a very good one. "Aspirational" might be better.
Some of it is just obsolete taste. Dickens is less popular than he was, but he's not really highbrow or deep. If you don't think he's fun, don't read him.
Some people just don't like novels but think that should read them. A relic of education.
Posted by: John Emerson | April 26, 2008 4:00 PM
Pretentious? I'd call at least half of that list light entertainment. Neil Gaiman must be very pretentious with three books on the list.
Hmm... going to go re-read Sandman now, pretentious or not.
Posted by: Ted D | April 26, 2008 4:01 PM
@#25 mahada --
To be fair, it's only PZ who says that this is a list of "so-called pretentious books". In the original meme, they're just called "Books of Pretension", a title that may be trying to make the claim that the readers of these books, not the books themselves, are pretentious.
Posted by: Etha Williams | April 26, 2008 4:02 PM
Ooooh PZ! You haven't read "Poisonwood Bible"? I highly suggest it! I'm a Kingsolver fan, and that book caused me to be so. I think you'd rather enjoy it. It does not look favorably upon the intense missionary father figure in the book... quite the contrary.
Posted by: Kcanadensis | April 26, 2008 4:14 PM
Jeez, I've finished 40 of those books. It'd be 41, but I somehow never manage to make it more than halfway though Middlemarch - I put it down and then lose my place, and can't screw up enough energy to start over again for a year or two.
Also,
If you can't appreciate Candide, you have no sense of humor and are a falure as a human. If you can't appreciate the Critique of Pure Reason, you just can't keep sentences longer than a page in you head at one time. If you CAN appreciate either Being and Time or Thus Spoke Zarathrustra, you're mentally ill.
Posted by: phleabo | April 26, 2008 4:24 PM
Does it count if you've seen the movie?
Posted by: Nemo | April 26, 2008 4:25 PM
How I love a canon. Wasn't this one somehow produced by My Library Thing or whatever it's called. I haven't sussed the details. Anyone know what's in the canon selected by 'Literature for Dummies'?
Posted by: Penny | April 26, 2008 4:28 PM
Hey PZ, I'm with Kcanadensis @30 in recommending the Poisonwood Bible to you.
Also, looking at your hit-rate of 77/106, I have to say I'm quite impressed. I wonder if scientists in general persist more strongly with books considered 'less than popularly accessible'.
But looking at that list, I don't think that's fair; aside from 'The Silmarillion', nearly every book I have picked up on that list has been brilliant.
Nearly.
I am led to wonder: how does 'Angels & Demons' qualify as pretentious? Isn't Dan Brown a complete and utter hack?
Posted by: silentsanta | April 26, 2008 4:38 PM
Why so many books by the same authors? Very strange. What about non-Greek mythology like the Kalavala or Japanese folk tales? Gotta be pretentious too.
Posted by: dutchgirl | April 26, 2008 4:38 PM
OK, I'm pretentious. I love Garcia-Marquez. The opening paragraph from "Love in the Time of Cholera" is still one of my favorite passages. It makes me wish I could read Spanish.
Posted by: MAJeff, OM | April 26, 2008 4:52 PM
@#34 silentsanta --
Actually, the more I think about it, A & D may actually be one of the few books on that list that genuinely qualifies as "pretentious."
To repeat the definition of pretentious given in the OED:
Attempting to impress by affecting greater importance or merit than is actually possessed; making an exaggerated outward display; ostentatious, showy.
At the beginning of A & D, Dan Brown claims that plot elements are based on actual fact, and even thanks research institutes like CERN, when in reality the book is riddled with factual errors and is utter fiction (and rather silly fiction at that). Other people in popular culture take it and its sequel, The Da Vinci Code, seriously. Thus, I think A & D is actually a prime example of true pretension in popular culture -- an "attempt to impress by affecting greater importance or merit than is actually possessed" that has had at least some limited success.
Posted by: Etha Williams | April 26, 2008 4:54 PM
The criterion for the list was "books that people bought without reading, but didn't get rid of". "Pretentious" was an interpretation, but not a very good one. "Aspirational" might be better.
-----------
an "attempt to impress by affecting greater importance or merit than is actually possessed".
-----------
this is where the idea of the list as "pretentious" comes in. It's assumed those book sit on the shelf, unread, as signifiers of taste. Not that they haven't been read because someone didn't get around to it, but that they're for show in the first place.
Posted by: MAJeff, OM | April 26, 2008 4:58 PM
@#38 MAJeff --
But then isn't is really saying that the people who list them are pretentious -- not the books themselves? I think the distinction between something being pretentious in and of itself and a person using something to pretentious ends often gets lost, and that's unfortunate.
Posted by: Etha Williams | April 26, 2008 5:01 PM
Anybody who thinks the Bible isn't pretentious hasn't read it.
Posted by: Hoosier X | April 26, 2008 5:06 PM
@1: Dune? Well-written? You must not have actually read the dreck, then.
My list of overrated schlock certainly includes Dick, Herbert, Heinlein, Asimov, Lovecraft, and the like.
There's this culture of unexamined idol-worship around them, and most of their appeal is the accumulated respect of age.
Posted by: Stogoe | April 26, 2008 5:13 PM
Eats, Shoots, and Leaves is pretentious?? You've got to be kidding me. But, I guess the nice thing about books is that people have their own tastes about them. I read Love in the Time of Cholera and hated it all. I got to the end and though "Florentino's a creepy idiot, and Fermina's not worth it." Bah. But Poisonwood Bible is quite possibly my favorite book ever. I wouldn't call either one pretentious, though.
Posted by: Carlie | April 26, 2008 5:14 PM
...[hit post too soon]
Or the people who read them pretentious, either. The most pretentious one I can think of, where the book, author, and people who reveled in having read it all seem pretentious to me, isn't on the list. (House of Leaves. Sorry if you liked it and aren't pretentious.)
Posted by: Carlie | April 26, 2008 5:17 PM
I'm disappointed. I think we need to maintain higher standards for aspiring pretentious intellectuals.
They should be reading The Sheltering Sky, Invitation to a Beheading, The Bell Jar, Discipline and Punish, As I Lay Dying, The Tale of Genji, The Trial, À la recherche du temps perdu (for added pretentiousness points, give the title in French), The Tin Drum, Death in Venice, Billiards at Half Past Nine, The Leopard, The Delta of Venus, etc.
If we don't uphold the highest standards of pretentiousness, then what use is being pretentious?
Posted by: Nullifidian | April 26, 2008 5:19 PM
The suggestion that books by Rand are pretentious is totally ridiculous. A "pretentious" book is one that somebody carries around to impress literary types. But literary types hate Rand, and anybody trying to impress them would be trying in vain. There was even a piece in the NYT a few weeks ago about this.
Of course, there are some of us who think that the literary types are missing out. We like our Rand as a personal private pleasure, and we don't care what other people think about it. Some of us who are in academia even have to keep our admiration on the down low.
So, I think one of your assumptions is wrong. I'm just not sure which.
Posted by: NS | April 26, 2008 5:25 PM
I can think of few things more pretentious than the making of such a list.
Posted by: Rob G | April 26, 2008 5:28 PM
@#45 NS --
This is I think the crux of the problem. The term "pretentious book" should logically refer to a book that "attempts to impress by affecting greater importance or merit than is actually possessed; makes an exaggerated outward display; [is] ostentatious, showy." In this sense, many would regard Rand as being pretentious and would argue that her books affect greater importance or merit than they in fact possess.
However, generally when people refer to a "pretentious book" they are, as you said, actually describing the pretension of people who "carry [the book] around to impress literary types." So in the popular usage a "pretentious book" isn't actually a book that is pretentious per se; it's a book that people use in a pretentious way.
If we were more clear about what we meant when we used the word "pretentious," I think many disputes would be resolved, or wouldn't happen at all.
Posted by: Etha Williams | April 26, 2008 5:32 PM
The first book I ever abandoned was "Dr. Doolittle" when I was about in third grade. I eventually got around to reading it and finishing some of the followup stories as well. I'm not a quitter.
I think that the idea is that those who claim to have read the list are pretentious, but the Angels and Demons in the list really, really argues against that idea. Dan Brown is in the "Oh, my God, I'm a success! Let me stop writing, now!" league of JD Salinger and Harper Lee. I've read books by popular authors that are far better, yet appear to have been written in a few weeks.
Posted by: freelunch | April 26, 2008 5:37 PM
Huh. I've read more than 1/3 of those books. I guess that guy would say I'm pretentious. Which bothers me not at all, but I *am* sort of boggled by the whole thing.
MKK
Posted by: Mary Kay | April 26, 2008 5:38 PM
I can think of few things more pretentious than the making of such a list.
Well, it's automatically generated from LibraryThing's data of who is marking certain books in their collections as unread. The assumption is that an unread book is simply kept on the shelf to impress the neighbours, which is hardly a new tradition. One of the more amusing things I noticed when visiting the Huntington Library is that their own library was open to the public, and you could see shelf upon shelf of the "great books" and yet the only ones that were cut, for the most part, were the penny dreadfuls.
Nevertheless, I think that this list misses. I think the reason that Angels and Demons remains on people's unread list is that they've heard the buzz, bought it, and can't work up the enthusiasm to tackle that piece of crap. I can't blame them, as I'm exactly the same (except for the bit about having bought the book).
Posted by: Nullifidian | April 26, 2008 5:40 PM
Please, do not think that I am comparing Angels and Demons with either Catcher in the Rye or To Kill a Mockingbird for literary merit. Dan Brown is the literary equivalent of Christopher Cross.
Posted by: freelunch | April 26, 2008 5:40 PM
Dan Brown is in the "Oh, my God, I'm a success! Let me stop writing, now!" league of JD Salinger and Harper Lee.
As long as he means it literally, I wish him happiness--long, long decades of happiness--in that league. ;-)
Posted by: Nullifidian | April 26, 2008 5:43 PM
Somewhat OT, but the conversation about Dan Brown brought this to mind for some reason:
Has anyone here attempted to read any books from the Left Behind series? If you get masochistic pleasure from reading fundamentalist idiocy, nothing could possibly beat these books, whose ideas and writing style make Dan Brown look like a literary genius.
Posted by: Etha Williams | April 26, 2008 5:47 PM
As Etha, Nullfie and MAJeff observe, it's "Books of Pretension," which PZ distorts into "Pretentious Books": i.e. it's books that Pretentious People buy to impress others (or themselves) and then display on their shelves unread. The linked bloggers aren't criticizing the books or people who actually read them, although the blog posts will naturally attract people who want to denounce or praise the books themselves.
Posted by: Josh in Philly | April 26, 2008 5:49 PM
To Hoosier X:
I still maintain that the Bible is no more pretentious than the Iliad, and to call ancient texts "pretentious" is anachronistic - in that it superimposes *our* cultural values onto a past society, for which these texts were originally composed.
I certainly haven't read *all* of the Bible, but I've read a lot of it. The Book of Mormon, however, is pretentiousness by definition, because it purports to be ancient, but is not.
But of course, Etha is right, if we're talking about the *use* of the text, then that's different. I've been taking this as, the book was composed with pretentiousness, not its later use.
Posted by: madaha | April 26, 2008 5:50 PM
This reminds me of an old party game in which you name a book you HAVE NOT read and get a point for each other person present who HAS read it. David Lodge described it in one of his academic satires.
It is a surprisingly interesting game. You seriously want to expose the holes in your own reading. If no one has read the book, even if it is "canonical", you won't get any points.
Can someone turn this into a web meme? So many of them remind me of the old party games.
Posted by: Kaleberg | April 26, 2008 5:50 PM
Nullifidian: Given that The Tale of Genji is basically the first novel ever, it's really just tremendously archaic, not pretentious. Also, The Trial is no more pretentious than 1984.
NS: The suggestion that books by Rand are pretentious is totally ridiculous.
I have to agree. Barkingly unhinged, sociopathically callous, sexually bizarre: sure. Pretentious: not so much.
Posted by: Sophist FCD | April 26, 2008 5:52 PM
so this is really about books people want to read, but don't?
That's not pretentiousness! That's just like any other hobby that falls by the wayside sometimes.
oy. I'm spent.
Posted by: madaha | April 26, 2008 5:55 PM
@#56 Kaleberg --
I have an even better idea: can someone turn this into a drinking game? I think that would be oddly hilarious.
Posted by: Etha Williams | April 26, 2008 5:56 PM
Well, it's automatically generated from LibraryThing's data of who is marking certain books in their collections as unread.
Sorry, I was unclear due to nausea. The playing of this game is very pretentious.
Posted by: Rob G | April 26, 2008 5:59 PM
Sophist FCD:
wouldn't the first novel ever be the Satyricon?
I agree about Rand.
Posted by: madaha | April 26, 2008 5:59 PM
Sophist FCD (or others) --
What does "FCD" stand for? Internally, I read it as "First Church of Darwin," but my only basis for this interpretation is my own bizarre sense of acronym humor...I'm curious what it really is.
Posted by: Etha Williams | April 26, 2008 6:06 PM
These books are just those that are most commonly tagged at Librarything as "unread". I expect to make this list, a book has to first be popular enough to be listed often and tagged, which is why there aren't any truly obscure books of the kind an academic might think of as pretentious. And then, once a book is bought and cataloged, there may be any number of reasons why it goes unread -- pretension being just one of them.
Posted by: JRQ | April 26, 2008 6:08 PM
The Friends of Charles Darwin
http://darwin.gruts.com/
Posted by: spurge | April 26, 2008 6:14 PM
Carlie @43
"House of Leaves" is one of my favourite books! The author is fully aware of pretentious wankery, and I felt he displays a charming adeptness at using it as a device in his book, internally and externally. I thought it was exciting to see an author take the essence of charlatanism and self-congratulatory bullshit, and somehow construct something beautiful out of it: Within those pages is the only space where someone could conceivably of can quote a moron like Lacan and actually be saying something useful.
If that does not count as a triumph, I can't imagine what is :)
Posted by: silentsanta | April 26, 2008 6:31 PM
I think the idea of a "pretentious book" isn't that the content or the author of the book is pretentious, but that the pretension lies in the idea that this book MUST be read for one to be credited as a well-read reader.
On another level, it's pretentious to credit one's self with a lack of pretension by virtue of one's propensity for leaving books unread.
In the end you only need to read one book:
http://www.amazon.com/Talk-About-Books-Havent-Read/dp/1596914696
Posted by: Jim | April 26, 2008 6:34 PM
Oh, this list is angering up the blood! Slap my ass and call me an elitist (a badge I wear proudly, by the way)...
I couldn't put The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay down.
Great Expectations? Pretentious? How about "Greatest novel ever written!"
Jeez, you know, I can't go on...gotta calm down first...
Whoever devised this list better stick to reviewing Dick and Jane, or is that too hoigty-toity?
Posted by: defectiverobot | April 26, 2008 6:34 PM
The three most pretentious books I can think of are (in order of pretentiousness):
1) James Joyce: Finnegan's Wake
2) Immanuel Kant: Critique of Pure Reason
3) G.W.F. Hegel: Phenomenology of Mind
Posted by: Mavaddat | April 26, 2008 6:37 PM
OK, I'm pretentious. I love Garcia-Marquez. The opening paragraph from "Love in the Time of Cholera" is still one of my favorite passages. It makes me wish I could read Spanish.
I'm so pretentious that I am actually in the process of reading that book in Spanish. "Era inevitable: el olor de las alemandras amargas le recordaba siempre el destino de los amores contrariados."
I also agree with those who have commented on Dan Brown. I have a copy of the Da Vinci Code, which was a present from friends, but nothing would bring me to purchase a copy of a book written by that hand. He writes some of the worst prose it has been my displeasure to encounter.
How about this for the plot for his next book: Robert Langdon discovers the skeleton of a rabbit in the jaws of a velociraptor and has to escape from the evil Big Scientists who try to kill him before he can reveal his find to the world! :)
That most of the books on that list should lie unread on shelves is a crying shame.
Posted by: ShemAndShaun | April 26, 2008 6:44 PM
"Quicksilver"?!? "Gravity's Rainbow"?!? Those *are* books of my particular bible. Old testament = Pynchon. New testament = Stephenson.
Re: Dune, I thought it was pretentious the first three times I couldn't get past the first 20 pages, but after I finally got past that it was great. Besides, it gave us Duncan Idaho - the Kenny McCormick of Arrakis.
Posted by: Libby | April 26, 2008 6:58 PM
I'm a bit disheartened to realise I've only read about 25 off the list. In my defence I've spent the better part of the last 20 years reading geomorphology, climatology and law textbooks and they're like, really really big some of them and they can take a really really long time to read. And they have big words and stuff....and no pretty pictures.
Seriously though for the next year until the PhD is over novels wlil have to remain on the backburner. For the moment my days are spent either at work or looking after 3 kids under the age of the 3 and my nights are spent studying, catching up on housework and hanging around on this blog reading you clowns. (Notice Mr Shrek doesn't get a mention- poor big ugly ogre just has to look after himself).
Posted by: Bride of Shrek | April 26, 2008 7:00 PM
Sorry, I didn't bother reading any of these comments.
I was reminded of the Woody Allen story, which I believe was called "The Shallowest Man in the World."
It could be re-titled with the superlative as "Most Pretentious" and illustrate the same point.
Unrelated moral: Do not join a mafia wives reading circle, for you will learn nothing.
Posted by: Sioux Laris | April 26, 2008 7:03 PM
defectiverobot-
I've come to the conclusion that the list is a list of generally good, sometimes great, books that are often purchased but rarely read, the books that anyone with pretensions of being well-read would own (except, glaringly, Dan Brown, but enough of him). The books on the list are good, sometimes difficult, but almost all worthwhile, even if dated. I have to agree with ShemAndShaun that it is a shame that people have not read them (Rand, Mr. Greenspan should note, being one that you should be embarrassed to enjoy once you are old enough to have graduated from college).
It may not be the modern Great Books canon, but it's not a bad start for any library.
Posted by: freelunch | April 26, 2008 7:07 PM
Guns, Germs and Steel is pretentious? Maybe the person who wrote the list didn't like the fact that Diamond's book says that European only succeeded because of those things and NOT because they were smarter or better in some way than those they conquered. Maybe his poor little Euro-centric feelings got hurt.
Posted by: Amy Larimer | April 26, 2008 7:09 PM
I think a lot of you are misunderstanding what this list is; it's a list of books that many people report not finishing, that's all. "Pretentious" is not Lynch's term, and it's clearly ironic.
Posted by: janet | April 26, 2008 7:22 PM
#74 Now, now Amy. Don't let the xenophobia shine through too much.
Had you read the other comments you would have noted that the list is not "compiled". Apparently it is generated from the database of LibraryThing as the books that most people have on the shelves, but have not read.
What your little rant against us Europeans was for, when the majority of the books on the list were by European authors, is beyond me. I guess you liked that book.
Posted by: ShemAndShaun | April 26, 2008 7:25 PM
European-bashing and European-exhaulting are favorite European traditions. I applaud and condemn them both!
Posted by: Jams | April 26, 2008 7:43 PM
I guess the idea that we exported all of our creation scientists to your shores many moons ago still smarts.
Posted by: ShemAndShaun | April 26, 2008 7:54 PM
You know what's pretentious? This fucking list.
Either that, or pretentiousness is a value I'm going to start championing.
Posted by: Marc | April 26, 2008 8:39 PM
Etha, if you want to cleanse your mind from the evil of the LaJenkins writing combination, try reading Left Behind Fridays at the Slacktivist. Fred reviews a chapter a week, and it's a thing of beauty to behold. I think he's been at it over a year and a half and isn't quite done with the first book yet.
Ok, silentsanta, if Danielewski was being pretentious on purpose, that might make it kind of ok. A little. ;)
Kaleberg - but wouldn't that game be completely undermined by the fact that everyone can just lie and say they hadn't read it either? I guess it would be the battle between trying to win the game and not trying to look like you've never read anything. The more I think about it, the more I like it.
Posted by: Carlie | April 26, 2008 8:53 PM
Instead of listing which books on the list you've read, I think it would be more useful to list which of the books you own but haven't read.
I bought Mansfield Park last year, and I haven't read it yet. But I plan to start it after I finish the Ho Chi Minh biography.
Posted by: Hoosier X | April 26, 2008 8:58 PM
I still say the Bible is pretentious. Just start reading Psalms and see how far you get before you want to tell the writer to get over himself.
As for the Iliad-Bible comparisons, read the beginning of the Gospels and then compare them to the opening lines of the Iliad. One is pure propaganda. The other is ... poetry!
Posted by: Hoosier X | April 26, 2008 9:03 PM
@#80 Carlie --
Thanks for the Left Behind Fridays link. It's incredibly hilarious. Though 20 pages of amusing commentary on Left Behind...I'll be shocked if I accomplish anything at all this weekend. Oh well. I guess that's why they call it slacktivism.
Posted by: Etha Williams | April 26, 2008 9:20 PM
OK, full disclosure:
I actually liked the Dan Brown novels and the Left Behind series.
Now wait! Before you all go dragging me to the iron maiden, let me clarify that I enjoyed them for what they were, breezy, hilariously pulpy trash. There's nothing wrong with breezy pulp trash from time to time (unless it's James Patterson, that guy is just insultingly bad). Sometimes it's fun to hang your brain on the hat rack for a while and just sit back and read the literary equivalent of mac and cheese. It makes you appreciate the other stuff so much more...! (And seriously, after slogging through Tristram Shandy for my lit masters, brainlessness was a welcome respite!)
Posted by: defectiverobot | April 26, 2008 9:43 PM
Etha, it's totally worth it. The only bad thing about it is the way it's archived you have to start at the bottom and work up the page. Oh, rats. I just checked, forgetting about the new typepad horror of pagination. That makes it worse. But for a review set that starts off the whole thing saying Rayford Steele is totally a porn star name, who could resist? If you use the search box for "Left Behind" or "LB", you get a google result that you can go straight to the end for and work back.
There is also Right Behind, the fanwankery respinning of the plot as if real people were involved instead of cardboard caricatures.
Posted by: Carlie | April 26, 2008 9:48 PM
Um...am I forgiven if I add that I just burned through all three His Dark Materials books in a row and loved them? The third was a little long in the tooth, but man, what an awesome premise...
Posted by: defectiverobot | April 26, 2008 9:49 PM
Pretentious
1) Marked by an unwarranted claim to importance or distinction
2) Ostentatious; intended to impress others
I can some of these books definitely being overrated. Certainly the work of Charles Dickens is tremendously overstated, The Silmarillion is far more a textbook than novel, Ayn Rand is the definition of false depth, and some works such as Vanity Fair or Mansfield Park are significant more for their history than their actual content.
Many of these, though, are quite simply bizarre. Jane Austen's books may resemble Danielle Steele novels, and the society they commented on may be far changed, but age is irrelevant to wit. Catch-22 fits together like a darkly beautiful 5000 piece jigsaw puzzle. And really, what the hell is Neil Gaiman doing on there? His work is complex, but they make breezy reads.
Then you have Angels and Devils. Pretentious? Dan Brown writes like R. L. Stine. Even fans of The De Vinci Code - not the most discerning lot - generally agree this book is rather crap.
Posted by: Master Mahan | April 26, 2008 9:55 PM
Master Mahan @87:
Dan Brown writes like R. L. Stine.
So true.
Posted by: silentsanta | April 26, 2008 10:11 PM
I rather liked The Fountainhead. But when I found out there was a whole cult devoted to Rand's philosophy, I thought, "WTF"? Are they trying to attract people who are too smart for Scientology ... but not by much?
Posted by: Hoosier X | April 26, 2008 10:26 PM
I can only assume that in calling Hawthorne "unpleasant," you've done so without reading "Rappaccini's Daughter." The narrative centers around a tension between science and god, or at least objective research and spirituality.
Posted by: caynazzo | April 26, 2008 11:27 PM
@Carlie and Etha: To easily view all of Fred's Left Behind posts from the very beginning, use Right Behind's archive. That way you won't have to deal with the evils of typepad's new pagination system.
Also, for the record Fred has been doing his page by page review since 2003. Hard to believe, really.
Oh yeah, the topic: I've read 31 of those books. I guess I could stand a little more pretension
Posted by: Spalanzani |