Friday, March 06, 2009

Lying about books I've read

Woodward of Thursday Night Gumbo links to a Reuters article about the books Briton lie about having read. Here is the top ten list. The ones I've put a "*" by are ones I have read. The ones I put a "?" by are ones I remember reading, but don't know whether I finished. Numbers nine and ten I have no intention of ever reading:
*1. 1984 - George Orwell (42 percent)
?2. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (31)
*3. Ulysses - James Joyce (25)
?4. The Bible (24)
?5. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (16)
*6. A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking (15)
7. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie (14)
8. In Remembrance of Things Past - Marcel Proust (9)
9. Dreams from My Father - Barack Obama
(6)
10. The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins (6)
As for the Bible, since I've never read it straight through I have no idea whether I've read it in its entirety. I know I've read the entire New Testament, historical books and the wisdom books, but I don't know if I'd read all the prophets.
The one book that I've started to read three times but never got beyond page 700 or so was The Brothers Karamazov.

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