BS: Book snobs

Subject: BS: Book snobs
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 05:39 AM

From a report in the Yorkshire Post today, a survey for travel company Expedia and BAA has found that many people buy books not to read but to impress others, this was particularly prevalent in southern England.

Is this because we northeners have more sense ?

eric

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Pied Piper
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 06:04 AM

A pox on you Eric I had to put down my copy of War and Piece to reply.

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: gnomad
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 06:29 AM

Let's stir this one a bit:

More sense, less surplus cash, enough self-worth not to need to impress others, oh and more of us can read.



There, that should raise a hackle or two 8-]

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 07:03 AM

Consider them raised. I've never read the books I'm 'supposed' to read... how many people who read 'the DaVinci Code' did so because it was a good story? How many people actually FINISHED the damn thing? I know I didn't.

And with libraries you don't need money to read books.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: GUEST,Dáithí Ó Geanainn
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 07:06 AM

And there's none so provincial as those who live in the capital...just a bit more seasoning for your pot, gnomad!

(Although I live in Lincolnshire,I was once working as a consultant at an organisation in London and the chance of a full time staff job came up. Colleagues there asked if I would be applying and were dumfounded when the reason I gave for not doing so was that I didn't want the drop in my standard of living that it would entail.)
D

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Le Scaramouche
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 07:49 AM

I hated the Da Vinci Code, an extremely lazily writtten book. Offended my sensibilities as a writer more than the rubbish history could.
Tolstoy is an author I don't really care for, but have read. Personally, I prefer his Caucasian and Crimean stories. Oh, and the one about the talking horse. Prisoner of the Caucasus is a very beatiful little story.
I'd much rather read Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoyevsky, and that.
Haven't yet gotten round to Ulysses and won't claim I've read it, apart from excerpts. I understand it's the #1 most lied about book.
Have hundreds of books, it's a favourite pastime, and have read nearly all of them.
OTOH, there are books I know I've read, but can't recall anything about them, beyond a phrase or two. EE Nesbitt, for example.

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: jacqui.c
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 07:55 AM

I'm London born and bred and I read mainly for pleasure. I'm trying to catch up with reading the so called classics but if it bores me it don't get finished. I've never seen the sense in spending money and wasting space on books I don't intend to read. Maybe there are some who do this but the majority of those I know don't have that sort of need.

I did read the Da Vinci Code - I enjoyed the book and it made me think hard about my take on religion. For that it was worth its weight in gold.

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: GUEST,Janine
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 07:57 AM

Yes true. A few years ago people carried around 'A Brief History of Time', then it was 'Foucauld's Pendulum', then 'Captain Corelli's Mandolin'. A top physicist, whose name I forget, wrote to Prof Hawkin to say there was a section he couldn't understand and he couldn't understand the reply either. All difficult to read but, my, did they look good in bag or pocket!

Janine

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 08:06 AM

Please remember that the Da Vinci Code is a work of fiction and sould be read for it's entertainment value.

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: jacqui.c
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 08:13 AM

Even works of fiction can make one stop and think about one's own views and outlook. All it needs is one phrase or sentence that pushes a button.

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: kendall
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 08:15 AM

I also finished the DaVinci Code. It's hard for me to not finish a book.
The Celistine Prophesy, and the Beans of Egypt Maine were two that I found hard going. Poorly written but interesting.

I briefly dated a woman who said she had read all the classics, but after a few well placed questions it became clear that she hadn't read any of them!
I didn't mind the fact that she wasn't a reader, but the pretense turned me off.

Lately I've been reading SARUM a novel of England, and I find it hard going, may not finish it.

I'll probably get murdered for this, but I sometimes wonder about people who learn 85 verse ballads. Are they showing off? They go on and on unaccompanied with such repetion.....what will you leave to your brother John? what will you leave to your second cousin on the side of your babysitters step friend?
Maybe I just don't get it.

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 08:16 AM

its an odd business reading when you think about it. hearing someones words in your head that's not there. almost sleight of hand. you get a feeling for the personality of the writer.

when I was a kid I was a bit of a smart arse, read all sorts of clever books. somewhere along the line I realised I was probably a bit dim, and I stick to stuff I can understand and enjoy.

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Amos
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 08:20 AM

I think carrying a book around to show off without reading it is almost sacreligious, and certainly asinine egoism. The LEAST you could do is try to understand it! I agree whole heartedly that Hawkins is hard to understand, and sometimes so is Dawkins and Einstein too. But ya gotta give it yer best shot. Otherwise, why on earth would you bother?


A

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Rapparee
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 08:42 AM

There are books I'm still reading, after 10 or more years. Godel Escher Bach is one of them.

When I read something, I want to understand it, at least as far as I can. I haven't had too much trouble with Hawking.

I buy, and have always bought, books to read. It annoyed me when in college and during work on a second grad degree (in English lit) I was forced to buy books that I otherwise wouldn't have touched (e.g., "Tropic of Cancer"). Fortunately, some of them I loved and those I "had" to read I gave away when I was finished.

If you see me carrying a book (and I'm not at work), the chances are 100 to 1 that I'm actually reading it.

Places with bookcases full of carefully matched bindings and all of the books in perfect alignment are a red flag to me. All too often I find that they're either Reader's Digest Condensed Books or law sets purchased as decorator volumes.

If you don't want to read, it's your aching void, not mine.

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: jonm
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 08:44 AM

I read books I believe I will enjoy. I reread ones I actually have enjoyed, though infrequently, since I do acquire an awful lot of books.

I have read and enjoyed a wide variety, some of which I would not have tried but for good reviews or the recommendation of (book snob?) friends, among them the Da Vinci Code (cr@p writing, a good thriller though), most of Umberto Eco's books and the Steven Hawking.

I don't show off about what I am reading, the "posh" books and "proper literature" are scattered all over the house among the detective fiction, fantasy and sci-fi, humour etc.

On the other hand, I approach every book with an open mind. I refused to criticise Jeffrey Archer without reading one. Now, I'm on the bandwagon!

There will always be those who wish to suggest their intellectual superiority by their choice of literature (true of music, too). Books as accessories, anyone? I find that having actually read, understood and enjoyed some of these books that I am sufficiently informed to manage a put-down should I choose to do so. Normally I satisfy myself with smug self-satisfaction.

It can be the same with cars - the bloke over the road cannot understand, as he explains the merits of a new BMW every year, why I would not have one even if it were free. He also does not understand that showing off how much the "extras" cost in addition to the list price is pointless when all the extras I would actually have wanted came as standard on my non-prestige car.

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: GUEST,DB
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 09:08 AM

I am always puzzled by people who are motivated by fashion - fancy having no taste of your own - weird, or what?
A lot of my tastes are deeply unfashionable. Things that I have loved for most of my life are English Traditional Song and Science Fiction and Fantasy (nerd stuff, I suppose, to fashion victims). Even then, in order to impress, me a song or a book has to expand my horizons in some way - it has to show me things I didn't know or force me to look at familiar things in a new way - quite a tall order. The revered SF author, Theodore Sturgeon, once said that "90% of everything is crap" - how true!
Anyway, I have read the 'Da Vinci Code' - I got to the end always hoping that it would get better - it didn't and I have filed it with the 90%.

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: My guru always said
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 09:15 AM

Having read the Da Vinci Code & enjoyed it as an entertainment, I read all his other books & enjoyed them too.

I've never heard of this snob bookery before, it's just crazy!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Janie
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 09:33 AM

For authors like Hawkings and Armstrong ("A History of God" & "The Battle for God") I find I can get more out of them (and finish them) if I get an audiobook and listen. The really tough parts I can replay over and over again--or if I am just am not "grokking" let go of and move on more easily than with a book in print.

Fiction doesn't hold my attention as well as it used to. I don't know if I am losing brain cells or if life is just so full and busy that it is more interesting than fiction. I finally realized I was indeed buying a lot of books I was not finishing, or even really getting started. That wasn't about snobbery. It was about lack of concentration and/or interest. Once I saw the pattern I stopped buying as many books for myself. My 11 year old loves books, reads at an advanced level, and also still enjoys having me read to him. I find I still buy a bunch of books that both he and I will enjoy, and I get great pleasure out of reading aloud to him.

Janie

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 09:38 AM

Places with bookcases full of carefully matched bindings and all of the books in perfect alignment are a red flag to me. All too often I find that they're either Reader's Digest Condensed Books or law sets purchased as decorator volumes.

    I have the exception that proves the rule. A couple of shelves worth of matched, in order, maps. There's only one publisher that prints walkers scale maps, so they do all have the same bindings etc. And having them in order is just sensible.
They are imcomplete, written on, and often quite battered, so probably don't count...

I've decided I need to re-learn my German. I tried to read various Thomas Mann books in translation, and could not get on with them. Must go back to the originals to see if that's better.

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 10:30 AM

I must confess I once bought the Alezander Solzeyntsin [ I can't even spell his name now ]novel One Day In The life Of Ivan Denisovitch because he was a fashionable author, but I did read it.

Mostly my reading is about folk music and similar subjects, I have a friend who runs a market stall and he looks out for books for me, I have just got the Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger book about the Stewarts of Blairgowrie ' Till Domesday in the Afternoon ' for a quid.

eric

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Rapparee
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 11:02 AM

I didn't say that matched bindings were wrong, just a red flag warning. You can have matched bindings -- I've got some -- and if they show signs of use, GREAT! It's those matched, untouched, ones arrayed in perfect rows....

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Bill D
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 11:11 AM

Rapaire..."Godel Escher Bach" haunts me....I keep opening it and seeing little trails of connections which seem like they OUGHT to click....but....

and then he has another one, if you get thru that one. "Metamagical Themas"

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Morticia
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 11:25 AM

I'm facinated by the idea that some books are 'better' than other books.....surely a good book is one you've enjoyed? Our shelves have comedy, Thomas Hardy, Jane Austin and other 'classics',Keats, detective novels, sci fi and Harry Potters all mixed up together....so what? Anyone wanting to make an analysis of our intellect from looking at our bookshelves is almost certainly going to think we are schizophrenic........again, so what?

I liked the Da Vinci code,and all the others. The characterisations and dialogue are pants but the storylines are exciting and there are all sorts of things I didn't know in them but then I've met very few books I couldn't get on with.....except for Jeffrey Archer and the Barbara Carthorse school of writing.

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: number 6
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 11:37 AM

There's book snobs, music snobs, university snobs, career snobs, house snobs, car snobs, guitar snobs, pretty peeple snobs, movie snobs, internet snobs, dog snobs, food snobs, cultural snobs, demographic snobs, decorating snobs, motorcycle snobs, resteraunt snobs, shoe snobs, political snobs, philosophical snobs, water snobs, hair cut snobs, coffee snobs, physics snobs, magazine snobs, gardening snobs ...

Snobbery ... a frailty of the human condition ... which one are you?

sIx

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 11:41 AM

Ah, books! Such wonderful capsules of words on paper, such wealth when we find one we can't put down, or one that engages or challenges us to think, to learn. And we learn in so many ways if along the way we learn to be critical readers.

I used to have more time to read more than I do now, and now I tend towards unabridged audio books. I have stacks of books waiting to be read and I hope I'll make it to them one day. I also have books because they are resources and I was able to get them at a good price (every so often Half-Price Books puts their excess Norton and Heath, etc., anthologies on sale for a buck or two a piece). I've put copies of those in each kids' room. More times than I can say my daughter (now a high school senior) has come asking me if we can find a particular book or essay and more often than not we've had it here. That is satisfactory for all of us. I can't and won't begin to duplicate the holdings of a library, but I have a core set of books that are very useful.

I believe that title above should be Foucault's Pendulum. I have some Foucault here, from a class I began in graduate school, the only one I ever had to drop (the now-ex decided to start disappearing on weekends and I couldn't manage child care and this much reading at the same time. At least he had the grace to show some chagrin when he realized I had to drop the class). I'd like to read more of it. As difficult as it is, I think he has some really good ideas in there.

I decided, many years ago, to read the novels of Thomas Hardy. My reasons weren't pure curiosity--more of a challenge from a friend's bragging about his girlfriend's reading--to see what all of the fuss was about. I quickly grew to love these novels, and am pleased to see that more of them have been published in the U.S. than were available at that time.

I did a master's degree in English and waded into a great number of books. It was a chance to wallow in stories and I loved having that opportunity. It was also a chance to read criticism and see what other people were getting out of these books. As a postmodernist, it didn't mean I needed to get the same meaning as they, and if I found what appeared to be flawed logic in criticism it made for a good paper because I had to back up my position with solid illustration of my own close readings and scholarship. All the while, continuing to read on the side and amazed at how ideas can form when you pass one book over another.

There may be book snobs around, but I don't know any of them. I know people who, as I do, slip the dust jacket off of a new hardcover before reading the book, then put it neatly in place afterward, because I have a growing collection of valuable first editions and perhaps this book will become one of those. I'm sitting looking at a copy of a first edition Sinclair Lewis It Can't Happen Here that I haven't read yet, but will, because I think this book's time has come again. Has anyone else read Babbitt? You should--it's funny and engaging and frustrating and a real eye-opener to how we live, still, in the U.S.

Steinbeck, Hemingway, Cather, there are so many solid American story tellers. And there are the essays. Baily White's Mama Makes Up Her Mind is a little-known (except among listeners of All Things Considered) is one that I've again pulled off of my shelf to reread. Linda Hasselstrom, a friend from years of attending literary conferences, has wonderful collections of women's essays. Crazy Woman Creek: Women Rewrite the American West is back on my bedside after a hiatus when I was reading other things.

I have boxes of books, novels and mysteries, I packed up at my Dad's house after he died, and I have shelves of books that he mailed to me after he finished reading them, because he thought I'd enjoy them. I've hesitated to take any of the boxed books to the used book place because I haven't had a chance to read them and I want to see what he was enjoying. He read fast, and he read every evening in his favorite chair in the corner of the living room over by the window. The next door neighbor finally decided something must be wrong when on a Tuesday evening he hadn't seen my Dad's light on since before the weekend. Dad often times went away for the weekend, but he was never away from his reading for that long. (Tom had been ill himself or he might have realized something was wrong sooner. He was still wheeling an IV around when I next saw him. We think Dad died a week earlier, based on phone and email records).

Dad was a retired reference librarian. He read all of the time. He collected music for 40 years. You can bet that some of the stuff he read fed into his knowledge of the songs he loved.

Not a bad way to spend your life, reading and singing, eh?

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Pied Piper
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 12:46 PM

http://www.onintelligence.org/excerpt.php
I've just finished reading On Inteligence and it's a great read.

PP

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: fat B****rd
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 01:50 PM

I like a good slasher book, mesen like. But I have read "The Name Of The Rose" a couple of Steinbecks, a Doestoevsky, a Solzenitsin (?) and Treasure Island. I don't give a F*** what other people think of my reading and nor should anybody else.

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 02:14 PM

You F****ng snob.

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: fat B****rd
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 02:15 PM

Yeah, right.

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Elmer Fudd
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 02:31 PM

If people buy books for any reason at all, other than to throw at somebody, more power to 'em.

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: John Hardly
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 02:31 PM

If you can't be a snob about the books you don't read, the music to which you don't listen, and your shits that don't smell......what's left to lord over people?

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: number 6
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 02:55 PM

Yer so right John!!

We must be perceived as being a snob about something .. if not, then we would be perceived as being quite simple (aghast!)

sIx

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Morticia
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 03:00 PM

tis a gift to be simple........( wicked laugh)

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 03:06 PM

Books books and more books... Nice post! You write beautifully, and your thoughts are smooth and well expressd... with compassion and insight!

Though it's usually non-fiction for me, Allegory and myth are often truer than life.

ttr

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: TheBigPinkLad
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 03:07 PM

Books I have had a go at at least three times but failed to complete include War and Peace, Mein Kampf, Das Kapital, The Winter of Our Discontent, Exodus, The Trumpet Major, The Affluent Society and the Pickwick Papers. The few books I have read at least three times include The Wind in the Willows, The Little Gray Men, The Major of Casterbridge, Far from the Madding Crowd, Lord of the Rings, Lark Rise to Candleford and the Fat of the Land.

I was cured of pretention when I used The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test as a prop to impress a girl in the 60s but she went and asked me a question about it ...

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 03:52 PM

One of the reasons I'm glad we're into fall now is that when it gets cooler I spend less time out in the yard and have more chance to sit and read. I set up a chair with an over-the-shoulder reading lamp that are perfect for me, and I have to keep evicting the kids' backpacks from the footstool that goes with them. When I first set them up I thought I'd "give it a test" and next thing I knew 30 minutes had passed.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 03:54 PM

Oh 'Mein Kampf' is the most boring book I ever read - I don't remember a word of it now except that it was the most self serving tripe I ever read before 'Angela's Ashes'....

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: number 6
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 04:03 PM

Beautifully put Liz !! LOL

Good one, very good.

sIx

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Morticia
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 04:51 PM

Anyone who can be that dismissive of Angela's Ashes hasn't a damn clue what deprivation means.......sorry Liz, but this is my history you are writing off.....

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: kendall
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 04:55 PM

I only have two with matching binders, the Odyssey and the Illiad. Both great books. The Illiad was good for one read, but I've read the Odyssey three times.

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: wysiwyg
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 06:12 PM

I just can't help it-- EVERY time I see this thread title I misread it as BOOB SNOGS.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Emma B
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 06:27 PM

In the survey - discussed today on Radio 4 - apparently 10% of people interviewed admitted to taking a book "to be seen with" on their tube commute and reading something very different in their home at night - sad.........
So - ok I took "How to write Chinese characters" to a folk Festival but I never got time to read it :>)

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Le Scaramouche
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 07:04 PM

Ghastly book, Mein Kampf, but I'm glad I read it. Wouldn't care to repeat the experience, though.

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: jets
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 07:55 PM

Kendall is a history major. In other words he claims to be a historion of some worth. I am primming to do battle with him.
By reading the history of New York by Washington Irving.Which, by the way , is a fun read, which rather suprised me. And yes I do have a matched set.Leather and marbled edges.All 16 volumes and I hope to live long enough to read them all.Why ? Because he too points out :
" What fools we mortals be". A chuckle on every page.

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Bill D
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 08:03 PM

"boob snogs"? *grin*....I'll BET you do!

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Joe Offer
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 08:20 PM

I guess I should be embarrassed by some of the stuff I read. I like trash - good trash, but still trash. Uris and Michener were my favorites, but I haven't read much fiction since I started doing music and church stuff. Most of the significant literature puts me to sleep. Oh, and did I tell you I really like songbooks?

-Joe Offer, not qualified for snobbery-

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Amos
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 08:39 PM

Hey I like good trash too! Clive Cussler is an old favorite of mine, and I love the occasional Stephen King marathon piece. The man manages his subject well, despite his occasional lapses. I mis-spent my youth on Clarke, Heinlein and Asimov, with SImak sauce and van Vogt trimmings. Never regretted a minute of it, because it taught me to believe the Big Lesson that JFK spoke of -- look at what has yet to be, and ask "Why Not?".

A

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: wysiwyg
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 10:06 PM

(*hi Bill*)

Toldja to visit us, din't I?

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Bill D
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 10:27 PM

(yep)

small delays in the process of becoming a book snob

Subject: RE: BS: Book snobs
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 10:29 PM

Recreational reading in the authors you've named isn't "trash." It's what keeps people sane and entertained. You can't (well, most people can't) read the heavy stuff all of the time. It's good, but it can be a lot of work, and you need to refresh your palette, so to speak. I love mysteries. I'm reading a Nevada Barr Park Ranger Anna Pigeon murder mystery right now.

The stuff I consider "trash" a lot of people like. As long as they're reading SOMETHING, it can't be all bad. (I detest Danielle Steele and a couple of other local romance writers whose formulas are so hackneyed that after one or two are pushed on you you can easily refuse them and wonder how anyone can keep reading the things).

I love Faulkner, and though I haven't read it exhaustively by any means, what I have read has been marvelous. I learned to read it by listening to in on audio books and getting the pace of the performer who was reading the work. That makes all of the difference.

Steinbeck's stories are just about perfect. Hemingway grates on me some, but his stories are still riveting. Mark Twain--if I had only one author whose books I could take with me to a desert island, it would be a tough call, but I'd probably end up with Twain. I like Willa Cather, but with the way she ended O, Pioneers! I could kick the idiot down the stairs! A modern novelist, probably one of our best living writers, with a remarkable facility for story telling and clever turns of phrase is Louise Erdrich. Her prose (and poetry) is magical. She also reads her own work very well on the audio tapes (I've read more than I've listened to, but I was very pleased with her author's reading of her work. Some authors would do well to leave the reading-out-loud to the professionals).

Ooops. A kid wants money. It begins. My future liberal arts major needs the registration fee for a college application. . .