I’ve been carrying this guilty burden for 25 years and now it’s time to set it down: I never read Middlemarch or Thackeray’s Vanity Fair for my Victorian literature class in college.
I’m not the only one. An anonymous questionnaire for Britain’s World Book Day shows two-thirds of people in Britain admitted to lying about having read a book. George Orwell’s 1984 is the most lied about book, according to the poll, followed by War and Peace, and Ulysses. Also gathering dust on a high shelf: The Bible, Madame Bovary Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time.
The results show the lengths to which people will go to appear intelligent and well-read, Jonathan Douglas, director of Britain’s National Literacy Trust tells the London Telegraph. “Research that we have done suggests that the reason people lied was to make themselves appear more sexually attractive,” he said.
Yup. Middlemarch, the ultimate babe magnet.
No need to read Vanity Fair, really. But Middlemarch! It’s too good to pass up!
Comment by Claus — March 10, 2009 @ 9:05 am
“Joe College” by Tom Perrotta has a subplot about the protagonist’s inability to complete “Middlemarch.”
Comment by Ms. Miller — March 10, 2009 @ 9:07 am
I’ve really have read Middlemarch (twice actually, once in college and again when I was stuck in bed with the flu), Vanity Fair, and War and Peace. But I got stuck in the middle of a Brief History of Time, and haven’t even tried Ulysses…
Comment by Rachel — March 10, 2009 @ 10:45 am
I’ve read Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and actually enjoyed it. Ulysses? Started and never finshed. But will I get back to it between now and the day I die? Yes I said yes I will Yes.
Comment by Robert Pondiscio — March 10, 2009 @ 10:51 am
I’ve never exactly lied about reading a book but there were a few titles I was assigned to read that I simply couldn’t get through and resorted to Cliff Notes. “Beowulf” I even tried twice (once in high school and once in college) but it literally put me to sleep.
There’s a much longer list of classics I’m a bit embarrassed that I have not yet gotten around to reading but nobody ever assigned them to me.
Comment by Crimson Wife — March 10, 2009 @ 6:52 pm