Have you read....

Happy World Book Day everyone!

I was rather amused to read about the survey that came out today, all about reading habits. Apparently a lot of us say we have read such and such a book, when in truth, we haven’t even glanced through the first chapter. 42% of people polled admitted to have falsely claimed to have read George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, 31% War and Peace and 25% James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Now, like me you probably don’t think that it was particularly necessary to have a poll to discover that people lie about reading some books, but I do think it is really interesting the titles people pretend to have read, because this must mean these are the books we rate as giving you a higher, what is it? Intellectual status?
So what is it in particular about these books that suggest one is ‘well read’ ? Odd.

If this is a case I think we all need to read, and I mean actually read cover to cover without only pretending, Alain De Botton’s Status Anxiety.
See the list here.