I have a Brimson book. It's not as horrible as some other football books I've had the misfortune to purchase.

In answer to the thread's title I'd have to say no. Much more influential is how people respond and think about the books they've read, rather than the volumes themselves. In fact I have more respect for someone who'd reads the works of Jeffrey Archer, for example, and had something interesting and original to say about them, than another person who's shelves are laden with modern classics but merely regurgitates fashionable opinion regarding their contents.

Yeah one of the nicest things is to get recommendations, find out about new stuff etc, so people do not have to like the same things at all for me to like them.

If I ever met anyone who claimed to be able to like Woolf I'd be thoroughly impressed. I struggled through Mrs Dalloway and then decided life was too short.

QUOTE:
In fact I have more respect for someone who'd reads the works of Jeffrey Archer, for example, and had something interesting and original to say about them, than another person who's shelves are laden with modern classics but merely regurgitates fashionable opinion regarding their contents.

or just read them so as to say that they have read them.

Well, the Woolf example was my cheesemonger, and she usually has impeccable taste. I owe her Beckett, so she gets more leeway than most.

Antonio Gramsci wrote:

QUOTE:
I have a Brimson book. It's not as horrible as some other football books I've had the misfortune to purchase.

I won't judge you for it, Antonio

You're more forgiving than I am, obviously.

"In answer to the thread's title I'd have to say no. Much more influential is how people respond and think about the books they've read, rather than the volumes themselves."

That goes without saying, surely. Anyone (with money) can have a collection.

I've never read any Beckett, which I know is thoroughly appalling. Too thick for Nabokov and not even an attempt at Beckett. I don't know.

Amor de Cosmos wrote:

QUOTE:
In answer to the thread's title I'd have to say no. Much more influential is how people respond and think about the books they've read, rather than the volumes themselves. In fact I have more respect for someone who'd reads the works of Jeffrey Archer, for example, and had something interesting and original to say about them, than another person who's shelves are laden with modern classics but merely regurgitates fashionable opinion regarding their contents.

There's a lot in that, certainly.

Lots of good points.

What people have to say and think about what they've read is more important than that they've read it and or liked it.

I've known a few people who don't read at all who were fine people, but I don't think we'd have much to talk about over the long term.

People who read fluffy "Chick Lit" don't bother me as long as they understand that what they're reading is not terribly profound. After all, a lot of what I read is "genre fiction." I am turned off by people who read Dan Brown or The Secret or various quack self-help books and believe that it's really great literature and/or philosophy.

I think it was Lenin who said, "It's one thing to be smart about dumb things, it's quite another to be dumb about smart things."


I agree that biographies provide a limited perspective on history, but good biographies can often say a lot about history. I also agree that they seem to be popular with older people and I'm not sure why that is exactly, but I think part of it is that biographies seem to be marketed by the publishers a lot more heavily than other kinds of historical non-fiction. I could be wrong but it seems like I see more reviews of biographies in the Washington Post book section or flogged by the author on Charlie Rose or The Daily Show than other kinds of historical books.

Perhaps its because biographies are easier to summarize. It's easier for a quick review of talk show blurb to say "It's the biography of FDR and its pretty good" than it would be to explain "It's a survey of the complex social, economic and political upheavals in the US in the between-the-wars period with special attention on the causes of the Great Depression, American Isolationism, the great wave of Immigration and Keynesian economic policies."

The latter would probably be more interesting and more thorough, but it's harder to sell, I imagine.