ITT: Books that people read just to feel smart

Governor Jeb Bush said:
1984 is good but it makes me wanna hit myself with a hammer when somebody says "OH it's like 1984" in relation to something IRL. Unless the book flew over their head or they have no brain, the novel makes it pretty clear that the language has been whittled down so much that nobody knows fuck all, they don't know better.... or do they?
It's almost implied everyone knows and is in fear of repercussions... but it is also implied that the articulation no longer exists ....

The book is designed to be interpreted and you have those fucks that think it's completely Black and White. In-fact it seems to be younger (gen Z) that think everything is super clear cut and never grey, makes me rage big time.
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If you tell the "hur dur it's like 1984" types to read another book, they start shitting their pants and naming books they probably haven't even read. It's pretty funny.

For the topic itself, Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. He's a mixed-race rape baby who thinks that bit about him gives him any degree of credibility when it comes to trying to figure out why groups are the way they are. I don't even care about the un-PC conclusions - the issue is that he's running with half the facts regarding some of the groups he talks about. He legitimately makes me angry.
 
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I listen to the Office Ladies Podcast at work to kill time, I don't really know what else to listen to, but one of the most annoying things besides Jenna Fischer's (Pam) basic bitch feminist soapboxes is when she cites feminist books to shill to the listeners and brags about reading them. Reading feminist's attempts to re-write women into history with Things That Totally Happened ™️ does not make you smart and a good person, nor does blathering about women's clothes not having pockets.
 
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I really liked Elementary Particles but after reading Submission, maybe Houellebecq books fall under this. Submission was not very good, frequently boring, and it's baffling that it was so raved about. And I'm just not sure how much more he really has to say that we haven't already heard.
 
Oglooger said:
they read the books? I thought they just posed with the cover and read a wikipedia summary to pretend they know what it's about.
While I'm at it, I'm reading this wonderfully intellectual book, It's pretty obscure and I don't know if you heard about, but it's called THE GREAT GATSBY
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I literally bought this book when I was around 16 solely cause I wanted to feel smart
 
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Cardenio said:
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?
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Because they either haven't read them and are just namedropping them after skimming wikipedia, or they have read them and they think that makes them very smart. The kind of people you see in YouTube and Reddit comments saying "1984 was not an instruction manual!" whenever there's any form of government overreach or surveillance.

The required reading when I was growing up was Shakespeare, not the books you mentioned. That doesn't make it any less pretentious when someone name drops Hamlet to make them seem cultured, even though you could make the argument that Shakespeare was the Michael Bay of his day.


I want to add another to the list. Gulag Archipelago. I don't think I ever heard of this book growing up, and if I did, no one ever read it. It wasn't until Jordan Peterson got popular I really heard of it. Now it and Brave New World are brought out whenever a leftie government does basically anything the right doesn't like. It's like they became aware that "1984 was not an instruction manual!" doesn't make you look well read, so are name dropping different books instead.
 
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Ged's Forth said:
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.
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I read it too back in college on behalf of the girlfriend and I gotta say, I liked it.
But it was a trippy one. I can easily see why someone else would not like it.

How many times was Nietzsche mentioned already? Cause add one more from me.
 
Judge Dredd said:
That doesn't make it any less pretentious when someone name drops Hamlet to make them seem cultured, even though you could make the argument that Shakespeare was the Michael Bay of his day.
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Eh I politely disagree. Just because the plebians were given cheapseats doesn't mean that Shakespeare is lowbrow easily consumable entertainment. The Bard is straight up the most influential writer of the English language, arguably the most influential writer Period.

No one would argue Stephen King is the modern day Charles Dickens. The latter was writing for newspapers, the illiterate had his serials read to them.
 
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Bad Feminist

I read this book on the request of an ex and it was on the NYT list for a little bit.

There is a chapter on how the dumb bitch author gets triggered because the ultra competitive men in the Scrabble tournament scene (of all things). I laughed when that chapter ended. They don’t even say anything to her, they were just upset about losing and then muttering like speds after. There were other stupid stories in it but that one stuck out.

That relationship didn’t last long.
 
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Jesus H Christ said:
Memoirs of a Geisha

It's nothing but a story of institutionalized child sex slavery in old school Japan and women being shitty to each other.
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I was considering reading the book because I really liked the movie and used to have be a mild (cultural) Asiaphile. I never got around to it because I kept reading that it's highly inaccurate and glorified porn.
 
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Cardenio said:
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.
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Dolores leaves Humbert not because he's a paedophile but because he's a shitty paedophile. She latches on to Quilty who is successful and famous and can leverage his success and fame to protect himself rather than skulk round the country like Humbert.
 
Analphylactic Shock said:
Dolores leaves Humbert not because he's a paedophile but because he's a shitty paedophile. She latches on to Quilty who is successful and famous and can leverage his success and fame to protect himself rather than skulk round the country like Humbert.
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So much is going on in the ending. Humbert is acting like a noir hero & getting his revenge while Quilty mocks him for his theatrics. Nabokov then drives the point home that our mentally ill yet profoundly clever anti-hero and Quilty are one in the same.

Such a clever work, it's tragic that it has been mired in controversy when everyone is okay now with works of art that go thru the perspective of the vile and depraved. I hate that the internet further cemented the controversy with the term "loli."
 
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I'm suprised nobody has yet brought up something like Wittgenstien's tractatus or something by Kant or Descartes or other philosphical works of a purely academic nature. This shit isn't written to be read, it's written so that the contemporaries of the author can deconstruct it and offer either felicitations and fellations or rebuttals and begin passive-aggressive academican pissing contests.

Books of this sort are written to be as needlessly dense and excruciating to read as possible in order to awe others with the size of one's literary penis. So you can be sure that if someone owns one it certainly isn't because they enjoy reading it, and that they are likely just borrowing the author's big dick energy because they lack their own.
 
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