ITT: Books that people read just to feel smart

[Flavius Claudius Julianus]

I am yet to meet a person who has read (or claimed to have read) War and Peace for any reason other then the book's reputation as beeg russian novel.

I've been through pretty much all the classics, English and otherwise. I always felt Tolstoy's short stories were his strongest work, despite the praise for his novels. That said, I tried to get through War and Peace about 5 years back, just to say I'd finished it.

I did not. Got about 900 pages in before I dumped it. Re- my previous post on uniform translation on the Russian novels above, the longer works are practically unreadable in English for anything other than extreme partisans. The Russian name phenomenon adds an additional layer of difficulty, and despite intense concentration, you still have no idea who is who after a few hundred pages.

 

[neverendingmidi]

Would these be considered stuff like a coffee table books? The stuff you leave out so people can see you’re reading it?

I’d definitely put “An Inconvenient Truth” on that list. 99% of the racial grievance books that have come out, 100% of said genre that have been published in the last year.

 

[The Curmudgeon]

"A People's History of America" is one I've witnessed people using to feel smart. Give a already pretentious liberal college kid or burnt out middle-aged activist this book and they suddenly think they know everything about the United States. If it's been mentioned already, then sorry for being redundant.

 

[Jarolleon]

Anything written by Karl Marx, Slavoj Zizek, Leon Trotsky, Mao, Noam Chomsky, Andrea Dworkin, Mikhail Bakunin, Pyotr Kropotkin, Robin D'Angelo, Tim Wise, W.E.B DuBois or Germaine Greer.

Also, anything written by Ayn Rand, Cotton Mather, John Calvin, Augustine, or Hunter S. Thompson

To be fair, you can't really brag about reading Cotton Mather because most people, if they know of him at all, remember him as "That Salem Witch Trial guy" . Or is that the normie equivalent of 4chan edgelords who read Evola because it's a "secret redpill" or something?

 

[Rome's rightful successor]

Anything written by Thomas Paine or John Locke, does anyone remember when sergon of applebees was sperging on those two?

 

[Hazel Motes]

I've been through pretty much all the classics, English and otherwise. I always felt Tolstoy's short stories were his strongest work, despite the praise for his novels. That said, I tried to get through War and Peace about 5 years back, just to say I'd finished it.

I did not. Got about 900 pages in before I dumped it. Re- my previous post on uniform translation on the Russian novels above, the longer works are practically unreadable in English for anything other than extreme partisans. The Russian name phenomenon adds an additional layer of difficulty, and despite intense concentration, you still have no idea who is who after a few hundred pages.

This. Tolstoy's The Cossacks is up there as one of the great depressing stories ala Lord Jim and The Mayor of Casterbridge. It left me shook when I read it long ago.

Anything written by Thomas Paine or John Locke, does anyone remember when sergon of applebees was sperging on those two?

You want autism? I've never been a Sargon fan, but I had a Thomas Paine phase during Sixth Form. I read all of his works and use to write notes on them. Watched documentaries. I even presented his life story for a History lesson. It's funny though, I read Rights of Man and thought Paine was being a right prissy pants whenever he insulted Edmund Burke so I decided to read Reflections and it completely changed my mind on Paine.

 

[soy_king]

I tried reading the Social Contract, but had to put it down when I realized that it was basically Rousseau just sniffing his own farts in book form.

 

[Slap47]

I am yet to meet a person who has read (or claimed to have read) War and Peace for any reason other then the book's reputation as beeg russian novel.

I liked the Napoleonic wars at the time, but I chugged through about half of it. I think the reputation was a big part.

 

[HunterHearstHelmsley]

White Fragility
Das Kapital
The Communist Manifesto
The Conquest of Bread

Haha fuck yeah fuck liberals

The God Delusion

Haha fuck yeah fuck atheism

Atlas Shrugged
The Fountainhead

Hey hold on

Mein Kampf

Wait just a minute

The City of God

What the fuck

Anything written by Mencius Moldbug, Slavoj Zizek, Sartre, Foucault, or Mao Zedong

Ok now this is BASED

 

[Tupolev Tu-160]

(Although some of them, namely Ulysses, belong to the category 'Books people pretend to have read' because no one other than Joyce himself has read Ulysses and you can't convince me otherwise )

 

[JohnDoe]

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(Although some of them, namely Ulysses, belong to the category 'Books people pretend to have read' because no one other than Joyce himself has read Ulysses and you can't convince me otherwise )

Kinda shit form to just lazily steal content. Made worse that half these books are required reading in school, and many of them aren't pretentious, they are just good.

 

[Str8Bustah]

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(Although some of them, namely Ulysses, belong to the category 'Books people pretend to have read' because no one other than Joyce himself has read Ulysses and you can't convince me otherwise )

I actually really enjoyed brave new world. 1984 should be reclassified as an essay with a noveletta built around the outside of it.

 

[HunterHearstHelmsley]

The Catcher in the Rye

I hated that book because I hated the protagonist.

The Road

I really enjoyed the book when I read it. I was young and enjoyed the lack of punctuation, sue me.

Catch-22

I found the book very well written and fun to read. I was young and in school, sue me. If I worked in Government I’d probably reread it and still enjoy it.

At the Mountains of Madness

I liked H.P. “Nigger” Lovecraft. Very thematic and better than 99% of the pulp fiction which characterises the genre.

Farehenheit 451

I wasn’t a huge fan of this one. It always seemed like a diversity hire to me. Like there weren’t enough American classics.

The Great Gatsby

This book had me feeling so sad. That bitch.

The Stranger

I read this book around the time that I was first trying LSD. I think he must have been doing something similar when he wrote it.

25 Books Commonly Namedropped by Try-Hards

I would agree with this (i.e. if you name drop the books you’re a tryhard) but that is different to books that people read to feel smart. I think Black Swan (or any book regularly mentioned on NPR) is a good example of a book people read to feel smart, although they may or may not be reading it to name drop it.

 

[Kulee Baba]

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(Although some of them, namely Ulysses, belong to the category 'Books people pretend to have read' because no one other than Joyce himself has read Ulysses and you can't convince me otherwise )

This is honestly one of the worst images I've seen.

Catcher in the Rye, 1984, and Gatsby are standards in High School reading. How the hell can you be a Tryhard if you're referring to two of the most commonly read (and very short) novels in existence? Consider me trolled because I'm honestly saddened if someone thinks they made a point with this list.

 

[JamusActimus]

Art of war made me feel smart because of how retarded it was.
The Alchemist is very surface level and not deep at all

 

[Tupolev Tu-160]

This is honestly one of the worst images I've seen.

Catcher in the Rye, 1984, and Gatsby are standards in High School reading. How the hell can you be a Tryhard if you're referring to two of the most commonly read (and very short) novels in existence? Consider me trolled because I'm honestly saddened if someone thinks they made a point with this list.

I don't see how this is one of the worst images you've seen when some of these books are mentioned in this very thread (1984 and Catcher in the Rye certainly are).

I don't think anyone is a pretentious tryhard just for reading and discussing these books, it's when they think they're somehow special and super smart for reading them and 'getting the message'. That's how I interpreted this image anyway. The books listed in particular seem to draw in this kind of crowd, you don't really see this kind of thing with say, Lord of the Flies or something. Yeah, the list isn't perfect but I still agree with a lot of the picks on there.

And if a book is on your high school required reading list that makes bragging about reading it extra retarded. But there are also lots of places where you don't read these books in high school, e.g. the only ones I had to read were Catcher and Fahrenheit 451. Maybe it's standard where you're from, where I'm from we don't read Gatsby in school or most of the books listed.

Art of war made me feel smart because of how retarded it was.
The Alchemist is very surface level and not deep at all

I remember I had to read The Alchemist for school and we had a bit of a local scandal because neither the school library nor the public library had enough copies for all of us (small place) and the teachers just said, tough shit go buy one from the store then. I literally sat in the book store for like 3 hours and powered through it, got an okay grade on the test, and remember nothing about the book itself.

 

[Kulee Baba]

I don't see how this is one of the worst images you've seen when some of these books are mentioned in this very thread (1984 and Catcher in the Rye certainly are).

I don't think anyone is a pretentious tryhard just for reading and discussing these books, it's when they think they're somehow special and super smart for reading them and 'getting the message'. That's how I interpreted this image anyway. The books listed in particular seem to draw in this kind of crowd, you don't really see this kind of thing with say, Lord of the Flies or something. Yeah, the list isn't perfect but I still agree with a lot of the picks on there.

And if a book is on your high school required reading list that makes bragging about reading it extra retarded. But there are also lots of places where you don't read these books in high school, e.g. the only ones I had to read were Catcher and Fahrenheit 451. Maybe it's standard where you're from, where I'm from we don't read Gatsby in school or most of the books listed.


I remember I had to read The Alchemist for school and we had a bit of a local scandal because neither the school library nor the public library had enough copies for all of us (small place) and the teachers just said, tough shit go buy one from the store then. I literally sat in the book store for like 3 hours and powered through it, got an okay grade on the test, and remember nothing about the book itself.

I dunno I was looking at the thread based on the title, books that make you feel smart. And looking thru that list there's a few books that qualify in that regard, the absurdly pretentious Infinite Jest. But again I just don't think books recommended for high school readers can count as pretentious.

Also the books of Charles Bukowski and Hunter S Thompson were written for the common reader of yesteryear. They're about utterly flawed & fucked up people. Can't understand why modern feminists have this massive hateboner for Bukowski. Bukowski was writing under his self insert drunk Henry Chinaski, it was a character you weren't meant to like. He was how Bukowski coped with the dark side of himself, a vile drunk piece of shit.

I will admit bias because Lolita is there, and I hate everyone who just writes off Lolita as a "pedophile" book as they so clearly miss the point of what Nabokov achieved with that novel. It's also hardly a difficult book to read, you might google some of the references Nabokov makes but the prose is always interesting and just downright funny.

Maybe it's just my perspective in life, it has been years since I left college and the people who I interact on a daily basis are the type who "don't read books." For me nowadays I can appear as a tryhard just by reading a book even if said book is a Fantasy Novel. I'd appear to be a "tryhard" if I was reading The Expanse novels in public.

 

[Toolbox]

 

[Adolphin]

The Talmud and anything that is written by Julius Evola.

 

[Ged!]

The Catcher in the Rye. Probably the worst book I've ever read. It's actually somewhat surprising to me that so many people like it. Though it does make sense that it's inspired multiple psychotic murderers.