Is There A Book You've Never Read, But Tell People You Have? Why?

[sunny-dave]

In my youth, I used to carry around a copy of "Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Mechanics" - absolute tosh of the highest water, I never got beyond chapter one ...

... but very good for impressing young women of the opposite sex.

[douglas9401]

Is young women of the opposite sex not, er, young men?

[woofgang]

Nope, never done that....btw it was "Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance" and no I have never read it.

[wolf63]

##
... but very good for impressing young women in order to have sex .....

Or something in that area of thought

[sunny-dave]

Ah yes - the fallibility of memory, woofgang - must do more fact checking to avoid fake newsery.

Doogie - opposite to me, not themselves ...

[sunny-dave]

Blimey Wolf - we're talking 1974 here - I'm not sure sex had been invented ....

[wolf63]

I was born in 1963 so there must have been sex back then, but it's not something that I want to think about. :-).

[gness]

That book's getting really dog eared and I'm fed up with you carrying it around on our dates.....bin it!

[Tilly2]

No.

[Canary42]

No. Why would anybody do that ? I'm baffled.

[douglas9401]

Canary, something to do with nirvana by any other name.

[MallyJ]

I read it all the way through ( the art of motorcycle maintenance)...in the absence of anything else to read at the time...tosh of the highest order and I finished it thinking that the author was a most unpleasant man who was horrid to his son.... Tried Das Kapital 3 or 4 times and managed to read as far as page 9...gave up trying!

[andy-hughes]

There are loads of books that it has always been 'cool' to have said you read them, but I never ever pretended to have read a book I haven't read, for any reason.

Top of that list has to be Lord Of The Rings - we have a connection, JRR's oldest son John was our parish priest and he married the present Mrs Hughes and I.

Still never managed to read his dad's book though - gave up after four tries.

Another one is The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy which I always found to be far too smug and clever for its own good, and about as witty and humorous as a root canal filling.

[anneasquith]

Eh , no .

[douglas9401]

^ To paraphrase Max from Hart to Hart: ^

When they met, it was Mordor.

[andy-hughes]

douglas - // ^ To paraphrase Max from Hart to Hart: ^

When they met, it was Mordor. //

Nice one!!

Lord we used to watch some garbage in the '70's!!

[jno]

takes all sorts. I loved LOTR. I found Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance hard going - not tosh, though, and I did read it all the way through.

Books I just couldn't get into and abandoned early include Captain Corelli's Mandolin. I'm told it improves as you go, but really, editors ought to impress on writers the need for a compelling first chapter rather than a boring one.

[andy-hughes]

Another entire series I have never managed to figure out the appeal of is Terry Pratchett's novels, although I know he is hugely popular.

I remember years ago, in our local shopping mall, Fred Truman was signing copies of his autobiography in WH Smiths on the second floor, and Terry Pratchett was signing his latest Discworld novel at the Waterstones two floors down.

I was in Smiths for about twenty minutes, during which time one lady bought FT's book and got it signed, and when I headed past the queue at Waterstone's, it was about three hundred people and growing fast out of the doors and down the street!

[retrocop]

I have never read the book where Noddy got mugged by the golliwogs and stripped him naked in the woods and nicked his wheels
But I will admit to howling the house down when my elder sister read it to me as a bedtime story,
"It isn't very good in the dark dark wood in the middle of the night when it isn't very bright"
Poor old Enid.

[douglas9401]

Mr Truman may have asked the assembled multitude to disperse while he chewed another wasp.

[Cloverjo]

I could never get on with Terry Pratchett's books either. My son loved them. He would read bits out that I thought were very clever and funny, but trying to read the whole book never went well. I blame Rincewind. What a tedious little fellow he was.