The Bible
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.
That first bit is part of the Apocrypha. It’s not in the official bible.
It’s from Second Kings 2:23-25, which is part of the Torah and the official 66 books of the bible. Though some (most) translations say that the curse is in the name of the lord/god.
From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some boys came out of the town and jeered at him. “Get out of here, baldy!” they said. “Get out of here, baldy!” He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys. And he went on to Mount Carmel and from there returned to Samaria.
Thanks for the specifics.
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!
I think kids might. I remember reading it front to back when I was first really getting into literacy, hoping to get adults’ seemingly godlike intuition for spelling words. Still like to open it up from time to time to peruse a letter
When it defined Zyzzyva, I cried butterfly tears.
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
Jesus
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
Literally 1984
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They just look at it for their daily two minutes of hate haha
For Christians, there’s one called The Bible.
The Bible
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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It’s actually not bad at all, especially if you’re into military history like I am. It’s basically just standard soap opera stuff interspersed with treatises on what war is really like. The worst part is that interminably long section about the fucking freemasons, thrown in for no apparent reason.
Read Anna Karenina you won’t regret it. I would argue it’s the best love story ever written.
Challenge accepted, added to the 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.
Infinite Jest
My mom is reading it! She said that it is confusing and messy, but wants to finish it anyway.
It honestly feels like something he wrote as a joke
Fuck me it is dense.
I’m an avid reader and I find I have to take breaks every 20-30min with IJ and just let stuff settle. Otherwise I find myself reading the same passage several times while my mind wanders.
Read it twice, absolutely love that book.
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.
I prefer the album “A Brief History of Rhyme” by MC Hawking.
Definitely the bible for most christians.
Non christians, probably To Kill a Mockingbird.
I read it in school, but honestly did not find it to be all that special. Its a good book, but its message was pretty simple and i think modern audiences would agree with the premise immediately.
I found “The Catcher in the Rye” to be the most thought-provoking of high schools books. However, i dont think it really would improve society if more people read it.
If i could think of a book everyone should read to improve humanity, it would have to be something akin to either statistics for dummies, moral philosophy for dummies, or wealth management for dummies.
I need to go back and finish Gödel, Escher, Bach
You’ll actually never finish reading it.
I have reread it several times, I know I’m far from done. So much I still need to return to.
You got me. I’m sitting next to my bookshelf, looking at it right now, but diddling my phone instead of reading a book. RIP, me 😑
I abandoned it at some point in the second half. It was getting even more interesting but summer was ending and I no longer had as much time.
Sometimes I buy physical copies of books I’ve read digitally.
Sometimes I buy physical books, then listen to them digitally instead
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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Haha, one ai bought and actually read. It’s a good book
Whats the tl;dr? Is it ‘be hot and/or rich’?
It’s been a long while since I read it, but the one thing I remember is the idea that you should let people talk about themselves and they’ll like you for it.
I don’t remember having bought even a single copy but somehow I have 5 copies of Catcher in the Rye, and I’ve never I’ve read it.
I tried to read it, I really did. I have a rule – read the first 10% of the book, and if it doesn’t hook me, I can give up. Catcher in the Rye is the only book I’ve given up on
Good on ya. The whole book is like that.
Maybe you could you read 8too!
I read it. I read the whole damn book. I kept waiting for something to happen. Nothing really did. 1/10
I think I’m in the minority here, but I read it and thought it was great. Worth a go IMO.
