The Bible
this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2023
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The trick is to jump around like a choose your own adventure.
Just popped in to find and upvote.
When I was in elementary school I actually tried to just read the bible. I didn't get very far through Genesis before I gave up.
You didn't even make it to the part where a man of god uses nature magic to summon bears to kill 42 children, or where a guy is mad that a father gives him the wrong daughter as property that he combines genocide with animal abuse!
For me, nothing tops the guy whose neighbors want to rape the angel that came to visit him, so he offers the crowd his daughters to rape instead.
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The bible
I don’t even need to buy them. They just pile up unread. One of them has nice art in it.
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The Silmarillon - the yellow pages of middle earth
Not in my experience. 100% of people I know that have it, also have read it. We buy that because we're Tolkien nerds. People who don't want to read it don't buy it. Also it's not at all like yellow pages for looking stuff up, it's more like the Bible I guess, a collection of mythological tales of old.
I guess there are some people that have inherited it, or just bought it for collecting, but I don't think this is the main case.
It might be different for The History of Middle Earth, it's huge and requires a lot of time, and it's more yellow pagey as far as I understand. I have them but have not read much of it yet. (Maybe you meant these?)
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Atlas Shrugged.
It's a massive paperback and looks impressive on a bookshelf but it's a dull narrative. I got about 200 pages in and was like fuck all these people and these stupid trains.
That was legit one of the few books I read halfway through then put down in disgust at how banal, ridiculous, and repetitive it was. The first part was okish because there’s something of a mystery, but the “revelation” that all the industrialists moved to a sort of entrepreneur’s shangri-la and that life without government created this perfect utopian society, it was just such a stupid thing and I was so tired of all the dead horse beating. Anybody who says they like this book is either lying or has mental problems.
When the completed manuscript exceeded 600,000 words, Cerf asked Rand to make cuts, but backed off when she compared the idea to cutting the Bible.
Wow, I didn't know this author, and it seems I wasn't missing much.
Her writing is simplistic, but conservatives and libertarians have pushed her as an “intellectual” because it gives them a well-known writer that supports their trash values. She was strongly against the welfare state and altruism, yet she herself received social security, so she was a bit of a hypocrite as well.
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She wrote anotehr novel, 'The Fountainhead,' with all the same ideas but much easier read. I finished 'The Fountainhead,' but it was mostly WTF comes next kind of book. There's an old B+W movie that sums up her ideas pretty well.
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I can't name very many people that have finished the whole dictionary
The book gave me a roller coaster of emotions, I never knew what was coming next!
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Anything by Ayn Rand. She’s a terrible author and most people are more interested in showing that they could have read The Fountainhead than actually reading that unfun, meandering garbage.
I read The Fountainhead in a high school English class and then got super into Ayn Rand and read Atlas Shrugged and some of her other stuff on my own. What actually happened was that I was a child in the Florida Public School System and so 1) didn’t understand what capitalism was, 2) couldn’t recognize terrible writing, and 3) was enjoying how proud my dad was for once.
Now I’m in my 30s and I can’t bring myself to throw away books at all, but also refuse to give them away and put them back out into the world for other dumbasses and/or impressionable children to find. They live on a bookshelf in my back room strategically positioned so that even if someone did go into that room they’d have to dig through a bunch of French textbooks and ancient American Girl books to find them.
If anyone would like some garbage propaganda advocating for a society of psychopaths written in the style of your drunk uncle’s auto-transcribed voice memos, hit me up.
You should burn them for warmth so they finally serve a purpose
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I tried to read the Fountainhead twice when I was a teenager and I never got more than a third of the way. It felt like watching an old person try to remember their shopping list
I wouldn't say most people buy them, but Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. For me, they're unreadable. Or, I should say I actually read them during a time when I was reading classics that everyone seemed to claim were great, but I didn't know anyone who had actually read them. At the time I was doing it just to be able to say I did. A dumb reason.
I got nothing thoughtful out of either of them. There were some individual sentences and paragraphs that were fun to read just because of the alliteration and poetic flow, but they made no sense. A book written for others to read shouldn't need external commentaries or a knowledge of the author's life and mental state to understand.
Now if someone says they've read Joyce and not for a literature degree, I lose a bit of respect for them, as I did for myself, and as other people should for me. 0/10, not worth, would not buy again, would not read again
Oh phew. I studied English Lit at university and had to wade through bits of both. I used to feel like I was some sort of uncultured swine for not "getting" them. But honestly, I just don't think they work as novels. As a piece of art, I guess, sure. Fine and modern art can look like nonsense without context, but often make sense when seen as part of a conversation with other artists and movements. If taken like that, fine, you do you, Joycey-boy, and write incomprehensibly. I'll be over here with my Iain Banks and Ned Beauman, enjoying them.
Not as relevant as it used to be regarding this question, but...
War and Peace
My Godfather tried to read that to me in it's entirety when I was 4 lol.
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Definitely the bible for most christians.
Non christians, probably To Kill a Mockingbird.
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A Brief History of Time - a fair number of people do read it but there's a pretty big chunk of people that just want bookshelf clout.
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I came to answer "the Bible", but it seems that was already taken. Multiple times.
It would seem that the people complaining about Christians not studying their scripture, commented without reading the comments ... that's somehow very meta
I suspect not many people go and buy religions texts. Most people seem to get them for free or as a gift, so I'll skip that.
Dictionaries and reference books like encyclopædia don't get read much, but that feels like cheating, because that's not really what they are for.
I'd guess something from classic children's literature? I bet a lot of adults have never read Robinson Crusoe but buy it for kids. Or they pass on the copy that someone bought them as kids, that they never read. As a kid I managed to get through some classic literature, but I'd sometimes encounter one that was actually less interesting than just... doing nothing and waiting for time to pass.
As an aside, I don't think there's anything wrong with having books around that you haven't read! It seems most of the value of a library is in the books you haven't read yet. Or refer to, without fully reading, to inspire you as you need. Or even just have because you think they are interesting or contain ideas of value, and hope to get to someday. The books I've actually read just get shoved in boxes somewhere dark and dusty. On my shelves or on display are all the things I haven't gotten to yet!
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Most of friedrich nietzsche's books
I got a really good one that I've seen everywhere but most people read summaries of it at best.
How To Win Friends and Influence People
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If you're Gen X, the entire three fucking ton collection of whatever encyclopedia itanica set out there and fifty time life books about random shit with pictures. Maybe sex by Madonna.
My parents, and those before them loved to appear as if they could ready but only really recognized the logos of gas stations and liquor bottles.
I think no one has read Manufacturing Consent beyond the first chapter.
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