ITT: Books that people read just to feel smart

[Cheerlead-in-Chief]

Eqquis. The play about a Freudian therapist dealing with a religious mentally ill teenage boy who's sexually attracted to mares.

 

[マチコ先生]

Books like Lord of the Flies

lol do people really? It's probably my favorite and most-read book, but considering it's a required-reading book for some and the fanbase is primarily made up of fujoshi/shotacons who make fanvideos like this and fanfiction like this (which is rather enjoyable), I find it incredibly hard to believe anyone could boast about reading it, lest they want to come off as a teen girl.

Somewhat related, feels as though once any book receives a film adaptation, it ceases to really hold any sophisticated status, whether or not it once deserved it.

 

[Ciscoipphone]

 

[Ruin]

Law and order and Criminal Minds told me that psychopaths and serial killers love Catcher in the Rye but in my experience smug dipshits love it.

 

[I can't imagine]

I've always wanted to read this but my add would kill me. It's defnitly an infinite circle jerk though.

I think I got about 40 pages in before the endnotes, and the footnotes to the endnotes, etc. just left me annoyed. Like, I have no problem with putting some work into reading a book, but it just seemed like he was doing it just to prove he could get away with it.

I do think Wallace's essays and travelogues are pretty good, though.

In a similar vein...do people actually enjoy Pynchon, or do they only like him because he uses big words and convoluted references?

 

[melty]

In a similar vein...do people actually enjoy Pynchon, or do they only like him because he uses big words and convoluted references?

Postmodern literature is like postmodern academic theory or anything else. It's more concerned with appearing to have meaning than actually having meaning. To help persuade people that meaning exists where there is none, confusing language is often used. Authority is also invoked (academics say this book is good so it must be good, queer theory is important because academics say it's important) so that people who might judge the work on it's merits will feel uncomfortable and defer to authority.
In short, no

 

[Crustyguy]

Starship Troopers was a young adult novel. Very influential on modern scifi, but was 100% written for 16 year olds. You’re just being a pretentious contrarian.

I dunno, it's kinda hard to read through when half of the novel is Heinlein sperging about his ideal utopia and how awesome it is when I just wanna read about military training and power armor porn.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

there's a strange amount of people that really really think books written by BIPOCs make you feel smarter.

I mean look, there's plenty of good books but I just find this dick waggling over consuming media solely on its association with a BIPOC to be kinda tiring. I mean for gods sake, woke twitter seems to think the Black Panther is the new Hamlet or something and you know that 90% of these idiots don't know shit about this beyond Wakanda being a nationalist african monarcy with super-science.

Or for non-comics examples, how about the fact that I keep seeing people try to bring up Octavia Butler but won't talk about it beyond `she's black`.

 

[augment]

I'm just wondering what kind of person thinks Starship Troopers is a book you read to pretend you are enlightened and an intellectual.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

I'm just wondering what kind of person thinks Starship Troopers is a book you read to pretend you are enlightened and an intellectual.

Someone who thinks George Lucas is an intellectual visionary.

 

[LinkinParkxNaruto[AMV]]

Postmodern literature is like postmodern academic theory or anything else. It's more concerned with appearing to have meaning than actually having meaning. To help persuade people that meaning exists where there is none, confusing language is often used. Authority is also invoked (academics say this book is good so it must be good, queer theory is important because academics say it's important) so that people who might judge the work on it's merits will feel uncomfortable and defer to authority.
In short, no

Its all about the meta rather than the actual content, thats why they like retarded walking simulator games that serve no purpose.

Everything is a relativist nihilistic joke with low effort but the fact it is so is what they consider deep, because it "deconstructs" the medium, ergo, it "deconstructs" the power structures inherent in the rules and techniques of that respective artistic discipline. So its art that it is not art, you just read 500 pages of nonsense but if we praise it as the best literature and replace actually good books with this we are making a revolutionary act.

 

[Jar-Jar Fanboy]

While I love the book, The Great Gatsby is definitely deserving to be included here. I'd also put most poetry books but I just think poetry in general is largely pretentious crap. I think another big one is Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea for the simple fact that people read way too much into the "deep symbolism" present when Hemingway was quoted as saying:

Yet if you look up the book you have a bunch of people rambling on about all the deeper meanings of every little detail of the book. It makes them feel smarter that they've over analyzed a book that the author has stated has no such symbolism.

I love Old Man and The Sea exactly for that reason. It's just man vs. nature for like, a hundred pages. No flowery bullshit, just a dude killing a fish, as God intended

 

[Tovarisz]

Any philosophy/political ideology book when read by people who are a tabula rasa on those subjects due too being too stupid to first have a deep thunk and come up with a personal set of beliefs and goals.

Such people just absorb the contents as their own and then run around telling everyone to read Locke or Marx thinking that since it made them believe X everyone will believe X too if they just read it, failing to realize some people never needed a long dead Author daddy and his holy book to have a set of beliefs.

 

[Ruin]

Anything that jerks itself raw over nihilism. I'm a cynical bitch myself but "dude what if like nothing mattered lmao" is a generic ass stoner take and not some profound realization.

 

[whatever I feel like]

A decade ago "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" was all the rage among people who thought it was some sort of evil twist that businesses which do business in poor countries are doing it for their own benefit, and not out of some sort of altruism.

 

[Buster O'Keefe]

4. Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut

Big disagree here, one of my favourite novels.

Dune-- I fucking love the Dune trilogy, and I think it's really great deconstructive nihilistic stuff.

Big agree here: never tackled the sequels, but Dune is worth anyone's time.

 

[Puff]

I'll see your Atlas Shrugged and I'll raise you The Fountainhead.

And I'll counter that these are books people read to make them SEEM smart. AND FAIL.

HEY. I unironically enjoyed Atlas Shrugged [Late correction, I liked the Fountainhead] (skipped the speech though) and had to drop Atlas Shrugged for being a fucking slog.

No one else brought 'em up, so I may as well do it: The pretentiousness combo:

1. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
2. La Rebelion De Las Masas, José Ortega y Gasset
3. The Art of War, Sun Tzu
4. Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
5. On the Road, Jack Kerouac

I've read all of those, but I'm a pretentious asshole so...

Starship Troopers is another one. I am 80% sure it is a purpose built honeytrap for pop political philosophy retards, the other 20% is the knowledge that Heinlein wrote Stranger in a Strange Land (The book people read because its in a billie joel song and never make it to the orgies).

I really enjoy it but I see Sargon types release hours long videos about its politics and just want to die.

Most of Heinlein's work is great if you can overlook his.....younger tastes. I went through Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land, I Will Fear No Evil, and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress over the last year.

Anything by Joyce fits the topic.

 

[gangweedfan]

Looked up Infinite Jest to post a photo of the cover. This image is pretty telling of the general level of circle-jerking that goes on around this book.

View attachment 1568237

The main thing is to read it because you think you will enjoy it not because you want to feel smart. People circlejerk books like Infinite jest and House of leaves because they are good books but often miss the point because they only read it so they can talk about how deep it is. Same with anime movies like akira and ghost in the shell.

 

[AbyssStarer]

The Hate U Give is one people "read" in order to seem smart and educated. Back in college I saw fliers for the book because some shitty book club was reading it. I kind of wanted to start a classics reading club but I knew all we would do is read books by women, that school was so obsessed with divershitty.

I read some of Pride & Prejudice after hearing about it for so long and it was so verbose and flat I had to stop not too long into it. The preface to the book was jerking off Austen so much too.
Most people probably haven't read it and simply gave it 5* reviews.

 

[Jar-Jar Fanboy]

The Hate U Give is one people "read" in order to seem smart and educated. Back in college I saw fliers for the book because some shitty book club was reading it. I kind of wanted to start a classics reading club but I knew all we would do is read books by women, that school was so obsessed with divershitty.

Imagine reading a badly written YA novel to seem smart and educated lmao. I tried reading a PDF of The Hate U Give just to see what the fuss was about, and quit after about ten pages. The whole thing just reeked of "how do you do, fellow kids?"