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.
some boys
two bears
mauled forty-two of them
Just how many boys in totality are we talking about here? And did the bears have to stop and take a break?
And he went on to Mount Carmel and...
"And then he went about his day, completely disregarding the two exhausted bears and the 42 mauled boys that were part of a sizable mob that he casually called a curse down upon'
I don’t even need to buy them. They just pile up unread. One of them has nice art in it.
I don’t even need to buy them. They just pile up unread
How? I've read this many times, but I never understood it. Do people just hand them out on the street or is it customary to give bibles as a gift?
When I was in college, once or twice a year there were people from some religious group who would come and stand at the most busy intersections for foot traffic and literally hand them out on the street, yes. They were quite pushy about it
You missed the chance to push back in your refusal. You had plenty of justification to be nasty.
Look, the people who hand out Bibles are usually from a specific sect of Christianity.
I get it, they're just as shitty as most Christians, in most ways, but...
The reason they give the Bibles away is because they figure that knowledge is power and they don't want to force people to have to spend money they don't have to be able to read the Bible.
I hate to say it, but I agree with their attitudes regarding freedom and access to information. They may not be distributing information I care for, but I can't fault the attitude. Information and access to it shouldn't be limited, because knowledge is power.
Right attitude, wrong values otherwise.
The reason they give the Bibles away is because they figure that knowledge is power and they don’t want to force people to have to spend money they don’t have to be able to read the Bible.
I want to choose when (and if) I read bullshit, thank you very much.
I mean they are giving them away freely and not forcing the book on people. They accept "no" as an answer if you don't want a copy. You are really free to ignore them.
They could be spending their free time doing something good for the world, instead they are spending it handing out bullshit that is responsible for most of the hatred in the world today
Thank you for articulating my position perfectly.
Thank you for confirming that I'm not the only one who feels this way.
I have pretty bad social and general anxiety, it is extremely difficult for me to be pushy with anyone, at least in person. At the time I think I mostly avoided them or lied and told them I already had a copy at home, which seemed to placate them.
In any case, I think all they really achieved was wasting a lot of paper and ink, because the trash cans around campus and especially the outdoor ones near those intersections were absolutely filled with bibles by the end of the day whenever those people came around. Once or twice I saw some student accept one and then two steps later toss it in a bin that was right next to the guys handing them out.
Sadly, they thrive on the social mandate to be polite even to abusers.
Why refuse free toilet paper?
When you celebrate a life event in church you go home with a new Bible.
Really? I've been to weddings and funerals and baptisms in churches and never have I been offered a bible. Maybe it's a local thing?
Count yourself lucky. If you want one, any church would be happy to provide.
I inherited a ton of books from my father, who was a minister & a Jungian psychologist. Lots of old interesting bibles, in a handful of languages. (Plus a Koran, and some Crowley, and of shelf full of Trotsky... ha ha. Lotta books.)
American? I haven't seen a bookstore selling a bible in ages, if ever
I was going to contradict you, that bookstores always carry bibles...but then I realized the memory I was thinking of was from the 90s.
I'd say this is just a good excuse for me to go to the bookstore and check...but they've all become so small and sad that I kind of don't want to. I just get depressed.
I know ebooks and audiobooks have massively taken off so people are reading/listening still...I just miss my childhood refuge being stuffed chock-full of treasures.
Sucker play, it's trivial to get a bible for free. For instance, one could find it on libgen or something idk
I just take the complimentary ones from hotels
Yeah, haha I was hoping the joke would land
They're really lousy for critical reading, though. I like the ones from United Biblical Society, with maps and appendices. They're good for linguistic reference, and they add titles and illustrations.
The dictionary
lol
The dictionary dikshunary
Do they have those at the lie-berry?
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?)
I rarely check people’s bookshelves but my experience has also been that people either don’t even know what it’s really about or they absolutely love it.
But I guess it’s possible that some people buy it after reading LotR expecting more of the same and then give up after reading the first few pages of the Ainulindalë.
I sought that shit out and read every word. I gobbled that shit up. "The Middle Earth Bible" is 100% an accurate description of it.
There is not much statistical evidence for my statement. Mostly from the people I know (though one actually read it, she is a true nerd) and myself (tried it but am probably not as much a middle earth fan as I thought)
As someone who has read the Silmarillion several times, any attempt at reading The History of Middle Earth peters out quite quickly.
That's exactly my experience. It doesn't help that I have the 12-in-3 book boxed edition that has almost see through thin pages... 😅
The Silmarillion I have also read multiple times though, both in English and German.
It is literally easier to read the KJV of the Bible than the Silmarillon.
Easy != Fun
Strong disagree. I've read The Silmarillion. Sure I don't remember much of it now, but at the time it was interesting and entertaining to me. It's also not that huge a book, on the same order as one or two of the main LoTR books. If the KJV were in the same (normal) font size+width and paper thickness it would be Gigantic.
This is the best description of it =]
Hey, I read half of it
Alright, name 6 characters with a name starting with fin
!/s!<
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
People can just enjoy them for stories and not actually believe in what the writer wants them to believe.
I can personally attest to that as I have to do it with most fiction, including Ayn Rand stuff.
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.
-John Rogers
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
Yeah. My grandpa made me read Atlas Shrugged when I was in HS and it was so dumb it made me a communist. I did like the scene with the fast train on the green rails. Literally the only scene in the whole book with imagery.
Nothing killed libertarianism for 19 year old me like reading that trash.
Can you blame them? Even South Park made fun of how bad Atlas Shrugged is.
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.
She was also an unabashed atheist, which is why she was able to promote the idea of selfishness being good.
What's funny is it's the mostly Christian right-wing which has embraced her.
I guess they're okay with atheism as long as its playing for the right "team."
I mean, they’ve elevated Trump as their God-Emperor and he’s very likely an atheist, had multiple affairs, and paid women to get abortions, but whatever, none of that matters when you’ve been conditioned all your life to believe impossible things. Next to Jesus walking on water and two of every animal fitting on a boat, the rest of it is child’s play.
She was also an unabashed atheist, which is why she was able to promote the idea of selfishness being good.
What the hell is this non-sequitur?
Nearly every religion preaches to be giving and kind to those in need. It's absolutely not a non-sequitor to admit that a large number of atheists don't believe there is any guiding morality to the universe and that we have to come to our own conclusions about morals and ethics. Moral relativism is a generally accepted thing among many atheists. This does not mean all atheists are selfish, I would classify most as Humanists. Rand was mostly an outlier.
She was able to promote the idea that selfishness could be good because she didn't ascribe to any religion that defined that as a sin.
She was able to promote the idea that selfishness could be good because she didn’t ascribe to any religion that defined that as a sin.
So basically she profited from existing bullshit to promote her own brand of bullshit. That's even worse.
It is indeed worse, I agree.
I do think it is odd she was embraced by Christians.
I'm not an atheist and even to me, that's a really transparent dig at people who believe something you disagree with. You don't need religion to be altruistic as you are implying.
I'm not implying that, the OP was. (Or so I thought. Apparently they are saying that Rand was riding on that idea.)
I'm a fucking atheist and I think Ayn Rand was a loser sack of shit who leaned on every government assistance she preached against existing.
So yeah, Rand was riding on it. I would like to think most fellow atheists reject her power-worship bullshit wrapped in "Objectivism."
To clarify, I agree with you on every word.
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.
As a teenager I had a crush on Dominique Françon and her sexual assertiveness until I understood how deeply perturbed she was.
She and Howard are supposed to be the sane ones.
[sigh]
It worth reading, because you get perspective on how anarcho capatalist view the world.
Read the whole thing. It's OK.
The worst part of the book is that stupid chapter in the last third. Which summarizes the previous 2/3.
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!
You joke but I read the dictionary as a kid (and not for the naughty words); helped me expand my vocabulary and gave me knowledge of stuff I wouldn't have known about at that age.
Hey, I did that as a kid too! My school was a glorified daycare, it was often the only reading material available, and it was somewhat more interesting than staring at the clock all day.
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
hoping to get adults' seemingly godlike intuition for spelling words.
Dit you manege to sucseed dough?
Haha kind of, but I still need to have little games for some words, like how the word "parallel" has two parallel "ll" next to eachother.
I'm almost certain my spelling has got worse since autocorrect/suggest became a fixture of my daily life.
Spoiler: the killer, it's Zytugur!
When it defined Zyzzyva, I cried butterfly tears.
The Bible
CHECKMATE
This was my first thought, and I knew someone had to have said it already.
Literally 1984
Read this 2 years ago. Not the ending I was expecting but good book. Not a hard read.
You can really tell that people who reference that thing have never read it. Honestly if you have a legitimate criticism of Western society to draw from a dystopian novel there's probably better choices. The totalitarianism in 1984 is in no way subtle or hidden from anyone, that's a big part of the point of it.
Of course, to reference something relevant you have to have read things other than rage clickbait.
I think it didn't need to be subtle for it to be realistic. You can see in certain communities just how unsubtle their hatred and stupidity is.
Yeah, exactly. Orwell was trying to paint a picture of how willingly people would accept gross oppression. You can see him talk about it in some of his letters IIRC.
In the West way more than just your TV watches you, but it's done in a very invisible way and for now you won't even hear back unless you join ISIS or something. Cynical forces manipulate the political process, but it's out in the open except for being just boring and complicated enough to avoid too much publicity. None of this is very overtly oppressive.
They just look at it for their daily two minutes of hate haha
The Bible
reading the bible is a horrible experience. there's paragraphs where the same story is being told in two different ways, things are repeated all the time. there's entire chapters that just go "x is the son of y is the son of z is the son of a who's the son of b and the son of c".
there's entire chapters that just go "x is the son of y is the son of z is the son of a who's the son of b and the son of c".
I can't speak to how relevant this is to history in most parts of the world, but interestingly in places like ancient Ireland, genealogy was an important part of identity. Among the questions a stranger would be asked would be who his father is, what his clan is and what his profession is. Obviously today we value different aspects of identity, but historically at least in some places (and at the point I'm mentioning in history, Ireland was Christian) bloodline was part of how people knew you; it's a fascinating look into historical mindsets.
Yeah except that it's a work of fiction. Even that part is just made up to gives some kind of authority to a character.
This is why you don't self-publish.
Sometimes yeah it's frustrating reading it because some parts assume cultural familiarity with very ancient names or places. I think I remember in the book of Genesis an ancient military leader is named and it's said he did some kind of trick to capture a town, but it doesn't explain what he did or why.
Storytelling has gone through a lot of development over the centuries
When was the last time you heard of someone buying a bible?
My partner bought a study Bible for academic use a few months ago, and our roommate bought herself one (for actual worship use) a couple weeks ago?
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.
I wonder whether it would have been as highly acclaimed had it been published under it's original name War: What is it good for??
Heya fellow raccoon, raccoon Bible is much better than the one compiled by Roman bishops in 325AD in Nicea e.g. "let there be trash for all" and "give to racoons what belongs to the raccoons" :D
Capital, clearly. Not a single anti communist has ever read it because they never once refute a single talking point from the actual book. But every anti communist acts like they totally understand what's in the book and some go so far as to lie about having read it. And then you ask them what it says or why they're anti communist and they just make shit up or parrot 1950s Nazi propaganda and pretend like that's what's in Capital or what communism is about.
It annoyed me the first few times it happened to me but now it just makes me laugh. Having a book on your shelf or knowing the title of it is not the same thing as reading it or understanding it
Marx didn't consider human nature so he's totally wrong
Fuck, he got us. I can't argue with that!
I, Dagoth Ur, believe that the entirety of his theory rests upon a grievous error. He, in his folly, regarded labor as the solitary font of worth and, in his ignorance, failed to grasp that capitalism thrives not solely by the exploitation of laborers but also through the ceaseless march of technological advancement. He dared to belittle the other wellsprings of wealth: innovation, entrepreneurial spirit, and the unyielding progress of technology, all of which lie at the very core of his theory.
Curiously, passages within "Capital" and the "Communist Manifesto" speak of the global ascendancy of capitalism, prophesying the vanishing of all things traditional and the dissolution of feudal remnants. Therefore, I, Dagoth Ur, put forth the audacious proposition that we may indeed regard Karl Marx as the inaugural, true theorist of globalization.
Marx talks about most of what you just mentioned in the first chapter of Capital. Socially productive labor transforming nature is the source of value in any society. He also mentions rarity as a source of value, like I remember him specifically mentioning pearls as an example a few times.
He included machinery and technology as what he called "constant capital," and the labor is the variable capital. To say Marx didn't consider technology would suggest he was unaware of what a factory was and that he didn't observe the industrial revolution as it was happening. He was born in 1818. He watched Germany in his childhood go from empty fields full of peasants to factories, railroads, and telegraph lines in his adulthood. You know what made that technology possible? Labor? And who operates that technology? Laborers. This is all cooked into his work.
I'd also like to point you over to the Grundrisse, the chapter called Fragment on Machines, where Marx even speculates on if machinery were all fully automated, saying laborers could move aside from production and just become just "watchmen." This part is good:
"Capital itself is the moving contradiction, in that it presses to reduce labour time to a minimum, while it posits labour time, on the other side, as the sole measure and source of wealth [...] On the one side [...] it calls to life all the powers of science and of nature [...] to make the creation of wealth independent (relatively) of the labour time employed on it [...] On the other side, it wants to use labour time as the measuring rod for the giant social forces thereby created"
He's saying capitalism would have a hard tike reducing labor time to zero, since it would defeat the concept of value itself. In simple terms, how would you even price anything if there was no labor cost involved? How would a capitalist sell their product or assign value to it? Who would they sell it to?
Hey look someone who didn't read Capital talking about Capital.
Marx definitely wrote literally chapters about industrialization
not solely by the exploitation of laborers but also through the ceaseless march of technological advancement
interesting where does this technical advancement come from?
What a grand and intoxicating innocence to presume Marx did not consider these things
Capital, clearly. Not a single anti communist has ever read it because they never once refute a single talking point from the actual book
Almost no one has actually read capital it's like the Bible hugely influential but almost no one is willing to actually read the thing
No, reading the Gospels, Paul's letters, Revelations, Genesis, Exodus, and selected Psalms doesn't count as reading the Bible. Do you count reading 10 chapters of a 60+ chapter book as reading the book? Of course not.
I was raised in a Christian household, and I was told that when I turned 12 I could be baptized. I looked forward to, and on the summer I was 10, I decided I wanted to be ready. I sat down and read the bible, front to back. I got to the end, and I paused: this was nothing like what they were telling me! I decided to read it again through, certainly I missed something? At the end, I decided to work through again, one more time, and then I was no longer Christian, at least not like these other ones. Now I'm not at all, but I love being able to source the bible more accurately than my Christian family members.
I grew up in an evangelical house and I constantly get to wield the line: “I guess I took the wrong lessons” as my comeback to literally any political dispute and it is wonderful having the ability to actually quote the Bible when arguing with my child relatives
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.
I was looking for this. 15 years ago this would have been top of the list.
People don't read popular science books? 🤨🤨
Okay, I admit, I am deeply perplexed by everything everyone is saying in this thread. Do people seriously keep books on bookshelves not for reading, but for decoration or to pretend they're well-read? Why wouldn't they just read the books?
Yes they do just buy them for decoration. If you are intellectually curious you're in an extreme minority of people.
Which I find strange. Usually anti-intellectualism is open, up-front, and honest about what it is. People buying books and not reading them just to pretend they're smart doesn't seem like a thing that actually happens in real life, just a straw intellectual the willfully ignorant like to beat up.
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.
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.
Infinite Jest
Read it twice, absolutely love that book.
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
As a jest, perhaps?
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.
Sometimes I buy physical copies of books I've read digitally.
Sometimes I buy physical books, then listen to them digitally instead
Dictionaries or lexicons. Who reads those from start to finish?
To be honest. I did.
I found another of my kin.
I had a dictionary of etymology that I truly loved. Can't say I'd read it from start to finish like a novel, it's not meant to be used that way, but I did spend time jumping from word to word learning about their histories.
But I'm a writer so I'm one of the few that would genuinely be into that.
What was it called?
I need to go back and finish Gödel, Escher, Bach
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 😑
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.
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.
Most of friedrich nietzsche's books
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!
For some reason, you mentioning Robinson Crusoe makes me want to either reread it again after all these years, or to see if there is a movie adaptation.
Haha, that's the one classic I couldn't get through as a kid -- I'm essentially immune to boredom, but after the 20th time ol' Rob thanked God for stranding him on an island, I was done with it.
Any biography about some liberal political leader, like that Obama one. I think people buy them just because they trend on the top 10 books to read list. But everyone I've met who has it just keeps it on their coffee table to make it seem like they're into reading now. The only one I know who finishes those biographies is my grandpa who is a little senile and bored now.
The Wheel of Time: Eye of the World
Not for a lack of trying
Are you kidding? This is a great book! I've probably read it about 10 times.
I'm not saying nobody desires to read it, I'm referring to how difficult it is to read because it's so wordy for some people. It's longer than the Deathly Hallows, has hundreds of characters, and the main characters only scratch the surface. Not negative things if you ask me, just these are complaints other people have.
The series is good, idk about the first few books in themselves though
I think that if you are willing to buy something like that, you're probably also willing to read it.
If you can get through it, the rest of the series is fantastic. TEotW suffers from a period of time when fantasy publishers pretty much demanded LotR, so everyone wrote LotR.
Sounds like a skill issue to me /s
That series took me something like 5-6 years to read, broken in the middle with Game of Thrones. WOT gets extremely dry by book 9 and Robert Jordan is tied up in something like two dozen plot lines with no way out.
I only finished the series because I was overseas with nothing to do except listen to audiobooks on my time off for a year and a half. The last 3-4 books being written by Brandon Sanderson was the best thing that could have happened to the series.
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
Own it and read it, probably 25 years ago. Just ask all my friends I've influenced!
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.
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 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.
How many people have you assassinated?
Did you sign the inside of any of these books?
I always forget Patrick Stewart was in that film.
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.
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.
This book gets a lot of shit, probably deservedly so, but I enjoyed the story, but skip over the monologue.
I think no one has read Manufacturing Consent beyond the first chapter.
I swear I had all the best intentions, but that book literally taunts me from it's place on the bookshelf where it's been sitting for the past 2 years. Not sure I even made it to chapter 2....
Well the first chapter is very good and reading it will explain why this book is so influential. It's also not very long. You can do it 💪
Thank you! I'm sure I'll get there. So many other books on my 'to read' list, but I'm going to bump this one back up.
I've read the whole thing, but all the interesting bits were definitely in the first chapter. I didn't know anything about the political situation in Nicaragua in the 80s, so it didn't make much sense to me as an example. Was reading more Wikipedia than Chomsky at one point.
All his examples also seemed like very local problems? Like, the New York Times' reporting on the Nicaraguan situation may have been biased, but international NGOs were reporting the truth (which is how Chomsky himself got his information) and newspapers all over the world were reporting that information. I checked the newspaper archives from my own country and when they reported on the cases from the book (which wasn't that often, because South America is pretty far away), they had the same narrative as Chomsky.
So the interesting mechanical bits were definitely in the first chapter and the rest of it was only relevant to 1980s Americans who got all their information from national media.
The maintenance manual for your vehicle.
Yeah, but the ending is sad. I mean, they never say explicitly what'll happen to Lil' Chongo after the 300,000km service, but it's implied...
Ol' Yeller.
Me, pushing my car into a quarry: "Don'tchu be lookin' back now, y'hear? Go'un, git!"
In the wheeze arrrms of the angel... strain, fly away from here! watches roll
I mean I don't buy these, they come with the vehicle. And I do read the sections relevant to what I'm doing.
1984
Fahrenheit 451
People don't read Fahrenheit 451? Or 1984? 🤨
Literally 1984
I read Fahrenheit 451 on a whim one day and the scenario was the exact same one we're in today. Except the fire department in the real world still tries to put out actual fires instead of burning books. We're not that far gone yet.
In my experience a lot of people have read 1984...
You definitely got me on Fahrenheit 451 though :)
Fahrenheit 451 is highly readable.
Do people not read 1984? They should, it's great.
I've not read F451, but I also haven't bought it, so I'm off the hook! :-)
Infinite Jest is just a prop for most college dudebros to present themselves as smart and cool in an effort to get laid.
That's a shame, I love that book.
Take me now, you rugged-but-learnéd dreamboat.
Nelson Mandela's autobiography, A Long Walk To Freedom. So many people want a copy to signal that they're cool and love the idea of the rainbow nation in South Africa, and that racism officially ended™ when Mandela wore a Springbok rugby jersey in 1995.
They don't realise that in his autobiography Mandela says that he takes inspiration from other left wing leaders like Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro, and rips into the ideology of people like F.W de Klerk. If they actually read it, they'd probably be shocked.
infinite jest
Loving that is quick proof that I’m a lib :(
I hate this like neckbeard pseudointellectual misogynistic popular opinion of this book, because it is truly a tender and empathetic and beautiful work
I'm currently reading it. I can see why so many people just leave it in the bookshelf.
It's not a bad book, but God damn does it feel like running a marathon.
It frustrated me, I've been pretty depressed in the past and I felt like I detected all the same thought patterns in it. Not a badly written book but I didn't enjoy what felt like a book written as a sort of self-flagellation
I convinced myself it was very important to read this book when I was 17, physically dragged my eyes across ~200 pages of it, and understood nothing of what was happening.
Lmao me with Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (makes sense ig it's just a guys whole childhood)
i liked the hell-fire sermon. My one office job I ever had, I did a dramatic reading of it for an old man and a former improv kid.
Sdgflk I read that part out loud for no reason at a band camp once and nobody was interested. I was a weird kid
highschool textbooks
Among my friend group it's House of Leaves.
"Wow, it's such an eerie unsettling journey. I really love it."
"you started it last year, did you finish it?"
"well ..."
I saw another lemmy user claim they had to take a 17 year break from it.
I read it, and while it's something different, it was more confusing than anything else. Definitely something I never read before though.
Why exactly would you buy a book and not read it ?
The same reason anyone buys anything that they don’t use, they think they’ll enjoy it but in reality they don’t find time or lose interest.
I’ve got a library’s worth of books, board games, and video games that I’m planning to read/play/consume “at some point” when I get the time. I actually have more content to digest than I probably have time left to live and that’s kind of depressing.
But those things aren't the answer to OP's question, are they? I'm sure that out of all the Harry Potter or DaVinci's Code or whatever whatever popular book you look at there'll be a nice % of books that haven't been read, but I'm pretty sure that a majority of.peoole that buy them also end up reading them.
The more reasonable answer would probably be something that's popular but not necessarily something you read. Like others have said, a dictionary, cookbook, or book related to some other skill. Those are a lot more likely to go unread
The meaning of OP’s question seems blindingly obvious to me, as long as you don’t take it too literally…
I’d say the DaVinci code would be a good answer, I’ve got a copy that I’ve never read. Same with the Harry Potter books as well.
The girl on the train is another book that everyone seems to own, but nobody reads.
Looks good on the book shelf. Many people decorate with books. Look at all those old mansions you see in movies, where there is a giant library.
I guess it's never crossed my mind. I never thought someone would get a book for a reason other than reading it. They do look good in a living room
People buy false books for decoration, so...
I had no idea
I sometimes run into interior design pics where books are organized by spine color, and I gasp and clutch my pearls at the heresy.
...but yes, some people do use books as decorative props instead of as things to be read and enjoyed for their content.
I get it. I didn't imagine books could be purely ornamental, but the consensus seems to be that's not too rare. I personally organise them broadly by genre and theme, so if I have to recommend something to friend I will point at a particular shelf and go "look in there"
I’ve purchased many books that I haven’t physically read.
I mostly read on my Kindle, or I listen to audiobooks. But for books I really love, I will also buy the physical copy to display.
Fair enough, I've never considered that before, but I understand it
I have a pretty decent sized library. My fiction section is about 95% read, but the non-fiction sections are much less. You sometimes buy non-fiction as reference materials, to flip through, etc. Not necessarily to read cover-to-cover. (I'd guess my non-fiction is 25% read.)
Because the book is boring ? Or poorly written ?
Why would you waste money on something that bores you?
Kinda hard to know before reading it.
The OP seemed to imply that not reading the book was always the plan, not because it was dropped halfway through because it's boring. But perhaps I'm reading too much into it
meant to read it then never actually got around to it
A lot of hipsters have Bukowski or Hunter Thompson on their shelves that they haven't read. They place them strategically on the corner of their $8,000 coffee table or bookshelf.
What the fuck kind of hipsters do u hang out with lmao
Here’s my molten hot take:
Hell’s Angels was his only good book. All the rest were him just huffing various substances and ranting. We get it, you don’t like Nixon.
Very few people can credibly dispute this because nobody actually reads the books.
Piketty's Capital in XXI century.
I'm not sure I'd call that popular in general. Maybe it is among your friends, though.
For certain sets of people:
Das Capital by Marx
A Critique of Pure Reason by Kant
Ulysses by James Joyce
Do the cutscenes in any given MMORPG count? It's a similar amount of text to a book, but nobody fukken reads that shit.
FFxiv players disagree with you :)
Faust. It's a pain in the ass to actually read. You're better off watching a play.
Thinking Fast and Slow
Sapiens
The Conquest of Bread
hey I read the first third of it before getting bored
harry potter mabye
The art of war. I would say anything by George Orwell but I know for a fact kids are forced to read his shitty fairy tales in high school as a part of their ideological brainwashing
::: spoiler hiding amazing emojis
:::
Kids being forced to read 1984 in high school like “THIS IS LITERALLY 1984”
The art of war is actually quite short though
Imagine the number of stonk devils, business ghouls, and tech demons that have a copy as a library or coffee table decoration piece.
Tbf far from the worst book they haven't read
it's not even relevant if they did read it. It's an instruction manual for running an ancient chinese army
I'm sure it was revolutionary back in the day for warlords to learn that keeping your supply lines defended was important and also you shouldn't fight a battle against an uphill defender with the sun at their back on muddy ground.
Yeah but it's about as relevant to running a business as a manual to use a toaster
We found the conservative
I think they're good books, it's just that they're again and again referred to as "proof that communism was horrible" by people who have not the slightest clue how communism actually was besides what the western governments tell them about it
Written by a British imperial cop who doesn't have the slightest clue about the place he's writing about and relies on his own life experience of oppressing Indians for King and Country to fill in the gaps
Really I found them dull 1984 especially
Demons
The Dostoyevsky novel? I don’t think that qualifies as “popular.” I’d bet money there are far more copies of Crime and Punishment that sit unread on pretentious peoples’ bookshelves thank Demons.
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.
Just how many boys in totality are we talking about here? And did the bears have to stop and take a break?
"And then he went about his day, completely disregarding the two exhausted bears and the 42 mauled boys that were part of a sizable mob that he casually called a curse down upon'
Thanks for the specifics.
The bible
I don’t even need to buy them. They just pile up unread. One of them has nice art in it.
How? I've read this many times, but I never understood it. Do people just hand them out on the street or is it customary to give bibles as a gift?
When I was in college, once or twice a year there were people from some religious group who would come and stand at the most busy intersections for foot traffic and literally hand them out on the street, yes. They were quite pushy about it
You missed the chance to push back in your refusal. You had plenty of justification to be nasty.
Look, the people who hand out Bibles are usually from a specific sect of Christianity.
I get it, they're just as shitty as most Christians, in most ways, but...
The reason they give the Bibles away is because they figure that knowledge is power and they don't want to force people to have to spend money they don't have to be able to read the Bible.
I hate to say it, but I agree with their attitudes regarding freedom and access to information. They may not be distributing information I care for, but I can't fault the attitude. Information and access to it shouldn't be limited, because knowledge is power.
Right attitude, wrong values otherwise.
I want to choose when (and if) I read bullshit, thank you very much.
I mean they are giving them away freely and not forcing the book on people. They accept "no" as an answer if you don't want a copy. You are really free to ignore them.
They could be spending their free time doing something good for the world, instead they are spending it handing out bullshit that is responsible for most of the hatred in the world today
Thank you for articulating my position perfectly.
Thank you for confirming that I'm not the only one who feels this way.
I have pretty bad social and general anxiety, it is extremely difficult for me to be pushy with anyone, at least in person. At the time I think I mostly avoided them or lied and told them I already had a copy at home, which seemed to placate them.
In any case, I think all they really achieved was wasting a lot of paper and ink, because the trash cans around campus and especially the outdoor ones near those intersections were absolutely filled with bibles by the end of the day whenever those people came around. Once or twice I saw some student accept one and then two steps later toss it in a bin that was right next to the guys handing them out.
Sadly, they thrive on the social mandate to be polite even to abusers.
Why refuse free toilet paper?
When you celebrate a life event in church you go home with a new Bible.
Really? I've been to weddings and funerals and baptisms in churches and never have I been offered a bible. Maybe it's a local thing?
Count yourself lucky. If you want one, any church would be happy to provide.
I inherited a ton of books from my father, who was a minister & a Jungian psychologist. Lots of old interesting bibles, in a handful of languages. (Plus a Koran, and some Crowley, and of shelf full of Trotsky... ha ha. Lotta books.)
American? I haven't seen a bookstore selling a bible in ages, if ever
I was going to contradict you, that bookstores always carry bibles...but then I realized the memory I was thinking of was from the 90s.
I'd say this is just a good excuse for me to go to the bookstore and check...but they've all become so small and sad that I kind of don't want to. I just get depressed.
I know ebooks and audiobooks have massively taken off so people are reading/listening still...I just miss my childhood refuge being stuffed chock-full of treasures.
Sucker play, it's trivial to get a bible for free. For instance, one could find it on libgen or something idk
I just take the complimentary ones from hotels
Yeah, haha I was hoping the joke would land
They're really lousy for critical reading, though. I like the ones from United Biblical Society, with maps and appendices. They're good for linguistic reference, and they add titles and illustrations.
The dictionary
lol
Do they have those at the lie-berry?
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?)
I rarely check people’s bookshelves but my experience has also been that people either don’t even know what it’s really about or they absolutely love it.
But I guess it’s possible that some people buy it after reading LotR expecting more of the same and then give up after reading the first few pages of the Ainulindalë.
I sought that shit out and read every word. I gobbled that shit up. "The Middle Earth Bible" is 100% an accurate description of it.
There is not much statistical evidence for my statement. Mostly from the people I know (though one actually read it, she is a true nerd) and myself (tried it but am probably not as much a middle earth fan as I thought)
As someone who has read the Silmarillion several times, any attempt at reading The History of Middle Earth peters out quite quickly.
That's exactly my experience. It doesn't help that I have the 12-in-3 book boxed edition that has almost see through thin pages... 😅
The Silmarillion I have also read multiple times though, both in English and German.
It is literally easier to read the KJV of the Bible than the Silmarillon.
Easy != Fun
Strong disagree. I've read The Silmarillion. Sure I don't remember much of it now, but at the time it was interesting and entertaining to me. It's also not that huge a book, on the same order as one or two of the main LoTR books. If the KJV were in the same (normal) font size+width and paper thickness it would be Gigantic.
This is the best description of it =]
Hey, I read half of it
Alright, name 6 characters with a name starting with fin
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
People can just enjoy them for stories and not actually believe in what the writer wants them to believe.
I can personally attest to that as I have to do it with most fiction, including Ayn Rand stuff.
-John Rogers
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
Yeah. My grandpa made me read Atlas Shrugged when I was in HS and it was so dumb it made me a communist. I did like the scene with the fast train on the green rails. Literally the only scene in the whole book with imagery.
Nothing killed libertarianism for 19 year old me like reading that trash.
Can you blame them? Even South Park made fun of how bad Atlas Shrugged is.
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.
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.
She was also an unabashed atheist, which is why she was able to promote the idea of selfishness being good.
What's funny is it's the mostly Christian right-wing which has embraced her.
I guess they're okay with atheism as long as its playing for the right "team."
I mean, they’ve elevated Trump as their God-Emperor and he’s very likely an atheist, had multiple affairs, and paid women to get abortions, but whatever, none of that matters when you’ve been conditioned all your life to believe impossible things. Next to Jesus walking on water and two of every animal fitting on a boat, the rest of it is child’s play.
What the hell is this non-sequitur?
Nearly every religion preaches to be giving and kind to those in need. It's absolutely not a non-sequitor to admit that a large number of atheists don't believe there is any guiding morality to the universe and that we have to come to our own conclusions about morals and ethics. Moral relativism is a generally accepted thing among many atheists. This does not mean all atheists are selfish, I would classify most as Humanists. Rand was mostly an outlier.
She was able to promote the idea that selfishness could be good because she didn't ascribe to any religion that defined that as a sin.
So basically she profited from existing bullshit to promote her own brand of bullshit. That's even worse.
It is indeed worse, I agree.
I do think it is odd she was embraced by Christians.
I'm not an atheist and even to me, that's a really transparent dig at people who believe something you disagree with. You don't need religion to be altruistic as you are implying.
I'm not implying that, the OP was. (Or so I thought. Apparently they are saying that Rand was riding on that idea.)
I'm a fucking atheist and I think Ayn Rand was a loser sack of shit who leaned on every government assistance she preached against existing.
So yeah, Rand was riding on it. I would like to think most fellow atheists reject her power-worship bullshit wrapped in "Objectivism."
To clarify, I agree with you on every word.
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.
As a teenager I had a crush on Dominique Françon and her sexual assertiveness until I understood how deeply perturbed she was.
She and Howard are supposed to be the sane ones.
[sigh]
It worth reading, because you get perspective on how anarcho capatalist view the world.
Read the whole thing. It's OK.
The worst part of the book is that stupid chapter in the last third. Which summarizes the previous 2/3.
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!
You joke but I read the dictionary as a kid (and not for the naughty words); helped me expand my vocabulary and gave me knowledge of stuff I wouldn't have known about at that age.
Hey, I did that as a kid too! My school was a glorified daycare, it was often the only reading material available, and it was somewhat more interesting than staring at the clock all day.
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
Dit you manege to sucseed dough?
Haha kind of, but I still need to have little games for some words, like how the word "parallel" has two parallel "ll" next to eachother.
I'm almost certain my spelling has got worse since autocorrect/suggest became a fixture of my daily life.
Spoiler: the killer, it's Zytugur!
When it defined Zyzzyva, I cried butterfly tears.
The Bible
CHECKMATE
This was my first thought, and I knew someone had to have said it already.
Literally 1984
Read this 2 years ago. Not the ending I was expecting but good book. Not a hard read.
You can really tell that people who reference that thing have never read it. Honestly if you have a legitimate criticism of Western society to draw from a dystopian novel there's probably better choices. The totalitarianism in 1984 is in no way subtle or hidden from anyone, that's a big part of the point of it.
Of course, to reference something relevant you have to have read things other than rage clickbait.
I think it didn't need to be subtle for it to be realistic. You can see in certain communities just how unsubtle their hatred and stupidity is.
Yeah, exactly. Orwell was trying to paint a picture of how willingly people would accept gross oppression. You can see him talk about it in some of his letters IIRC.
In the West way more than just your TV watches you, but it's done in a very invisible way and for now you won't even hear back unless you join ISIS or something. Cynical forces manipulate the political process, but it's out in the open except for being just boring and complicated enough to avoid too much publicity. None of this is very overtly oppressive.
They just look at it for their daily two minutes of hate haha
The Bible
reading the bible is a horrible experience. there's paragraphs where the same story is being told in two different ways, things are repeated all the time. there's entire chapters that just go "x is the son of y is the son of z is the son of a who's the son of b and the son of c".
I can't speak to how relevant this is to history in most parts of the world, but interestingly in places like ancient Ireland, genealogy was an important part of identity. Among the questions a stranger would be asked would be who his father is, what his clan is and what his profession is. Obviously today we value different aspects of identity, but historically at least in some places (and at the point I'm mentioning in history, Ireland was Christian) bloodline was part of how people knew you; it's a fascinating look into historical mindsets.
Yeah except that it's a work of fiction. Even that part is just made up to gives some kind of authority to a character.
This is why you don't self-publish.
Sometimes yeah it's frustrating reading it because some parts assume cultural familiarity with very ancient names or places. I think I remember in the book of Genesis an ancient military leader is named and it's said he did some kind of trick to capture a town, but it doesn't explain what he did or why.
Storytelling has gone through a lot of development over the centuries
When was the last time you heard of someone buying a bible?
My partner bought a study Bible for academic use a few months ago, and our roommate bought herself one (for actual worship use) a couple weeks ago?
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.
I wonder whether it would have been as highly acclaimed had it been published under it's original name War: What is it good for??
Got me picturing Jackie and Chris now
For Christians, there's one called The Bible.
Heya fellow raccoon, raccoon Bible is much better than the one compiled by Roman bishops in 325AD in Nicea e.g. "let there be trash for all" and "give to racoons what belongs to the raccoons" :D
Capital, clearly. Not a single anti communist has ever read it because they never once refute a single talking point from the actual book. But every anti communist acts like they totally understand what's in the book and some go so far as to lie about having read it. And then you ask them what it says or why they're anti communist and they just make shit up or parrot 1950s Nazi propaganda and pretend like that's what's in Capital or what communism is about.
It annoyed me the first few times it happened to me but now it just makes me laugh. Having a book on your shelf or knowing the title of it is not the same thing as reading it or understanding it
Marx didn't consider human nature so he's totally wrong
Fuck, he got us. I can't argue with that!
I, Dagoth Ur, believe that the entirety of his theory rests upon a grievous error. He, in his folly, regarded labor as the solitary font of worth and, in his ignorance, failed to grasp that capitalism thrives not solely by the exploitation of laborers but also through the ceaseless march of technological advancement. He dared to belittle the other wellsprings of wealth: innovation, entrepreneurial spirit, and the unyielding progress of technology, all of which lie at the very core of his theory.
Curiously, passages within "Capital" and the "Communist Manifesto" speak of the global ascendancy of capitalism, prophesying the vanishing of all things traditional and the dissolution of feudal remnants. Therefore, I, Dagoth Ur, put forth the audacious proposition that we may indeed regard Karl Marx as the inaugural, true theorist of globalization.
Marx talks about most of what you just mentioned in the first chapter of Capital. Socially productive labor transforming nature is the source of value in any society. He also mentions rarity as a source of value, like I remember him specifically mentioning pearls as an example a few times.
He included machinery and technology as what he called "constant capital," and the labor is the variable capital. To say Marx didn't consider technology would suggest he was unaware of what a factory was and that he didn't observe the industrial revolution as it was happening. He was born in 1818. He watched Germany in his childhood go from empty fields full of peasants to factories, railroads, and telegraph lines in his adulthood. You know what made that technology possible? Labor? And who operates that technology? Laborers. This is all cooked into his work.
I'd also like to point you over to the Grundrisse, the chapter called Fragment on Machines, where Marx even speculates on if machinery were all fully automated, saying laborers could move aside from production and just become just "watchmen." This part is good:
"Capital itself is the moving contradiction, in that it presses to reduce labour time to a minimum, while it posits labour time, on the other side, as the sole measure and source of wealth [...] On the one side [...] it calls to life all the powers of science and of nature [...] to make the creation of wealth independent (relatively) of the labour time employed on it [...] On the other side, it wants to use labour time as the measuring rod for the giant social forces thereby created"
He's saying capitalism would have a hard tike reducing labor time to zero, since it would defeat the concept of value itself. In simple terms, how would you even price anything if there was no labor cost involved? How would a capitalist sell their product or assign value to it? Who would they sell it to?
Hey look someone who didn't read Capital talking about Capital.
Marx definitely wrote literally chapters about industrialization
interesting where does this technical advancement come from?
What a grand and intoxicating innocence to presume Marx did not consider these things
Almost no one has actually read capital it's like the Bible hugely influential but almost no one is willing to actually read the thing
If you truly want to understand Marx this is probably the best way to get started... https://archive.org/details/Introducing_Marx/mode/1up
Without a shadow of a doubt the Bible.
No, reading the Gospels, Paul's letters, Revelations, Genesis, Exodus, and selected Psalms doesn't count as reading the Bible. Do you count reading 10 chapters of a 60+ chapter book as reading the book? Of course not.
I was raised in a Christian household, and I was told that when I turned 12 I could be baptized. I looked forward to, and on the summer I was 10, I decided I wanted to be ready. I sat down and read the bible, front to back. I got to the end, and I paused: this was nothing like what they were telling me! I decided to read it again through, certainly I missed something? At the end, I decided to work through again, one more time, and then I was no longer Christian, at least not like these other ones. Now I'm not at all, but I love being able to source the bible more accurately than my Christian family members.
I grew up in an evangelical house and I constantly get to wield the line: “I guess I took the wrong lessons” as my comeback to literally any political dispute and it is wonderful having the ability to actually quote the Bible when arguing with my child relatives
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.
I was looking for this. 15 years ago this would have been top of the list.
People don't read popular science books? 🤨🤨
Okay, I admit, I am deeply perplexed by everything everyone is saying in this thread. Do people seriously keep books on bookshelves not for reading, but for decoration or to pretend they're well-read? Why wouldn't they just read the books?
Yes they do just buy them for decoration. If you are intellectually curious you're in an extreme minority of people.
Which I find strange. Usually anti-intellectualism is open, up-front, and honest about what it is. People buying books and not reading them just to pretend they're smart doesn't seem like a thing that actually happens in real life, just a straw intellectual the willfully ignorant like to beat up.
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.
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.
Infinite Jest
Read it twice, absolutely love that book.
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
As a jest, perhaps?
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.
Sometimes I buy physical copies of books I've read digitally.
Sometimes I buy physical books, then listen to them digitally instead
Dictionaries or lexicons. Who reads those from start to finish?
To be honest. I did.
I found another of my kin.
I had a dictionary of etymology that I truly loved. Can't say I'd read it from start to finish like a novel, it's not meant to be used that way, but I did spend time jumping from word to word learning about their histories.
But I'm a writer so I'm one of the few that would genuinely be into that.
What was it called?
I need to go back and finish Gödel, Escher, Bach
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 😑
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.
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.
Most of friedrich nietzsche's books
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!
For some reason, you mentioning Robinson Crusoe makes me want to either reread it again after all these years, or to see if there is a movie adaptation.
Haha, that's the one classic I couldn't get through as a kid -- I'm essentially immune to boredom, but after the 20th time ol' Rob thanked God for stranding him on an island, I was done with it.
Any biography about some liberal political leader, like that Obama one. I think people buy them just because they trend on the top 10 books to read list. But everyone I've met who has it just keeps it on their coffee table to make it seem like they're into reading now. The only one I know who finishes those biographies is my grandpa who is a little senile and bored now.
The Wheel of Time: Eye of the World
Not for a lack of trying
Are you kidding? This is a great book! I've probably read it about 10 times.
I'm not saying nobody desires to read it, I'm referring to how difficult it is to read because it's so wordy for some people. It's longer than the Deathly Hallows, has hundreds of characters, and the main characters only scratch the surface. Not negative things if you ask me, just these are complaints other people have.
The series is good, idk about the first few books in themselves though
I think that if you are willing to buy something like that, you're probably also willing to read it.
If you can get through it, the rest of the series is fantastic. TEotW suffers from a period of time when fantasy publishers pretty much demanded LotR, so everyone wrote LotR.
Sounds like a skill issue to me /s
That series took me something like 5-6 years to read, broken in the middle with Game of Thrones. WOT gets extremely dry by book 9 and Robert Jordan is tied up in something like two dozen plot lines with no way out.
I only finished the series because I was overseas with nothing to do except listen to audiobooks on my time off for a year and a half. The last 3-4 books being written by Brandon Sanderson was the best thing that could have happened to the series.
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
Own it and read it, probably 25 years ago. Just ask all my friends I've influenced!
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.
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 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.
How many people have you assassinated?
Did you sign the inside of any of these books?
I always forget Patrick Stewart was in that film.
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.
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.
Maybe you could you read 8too!
Atlas Shrugged
What a worthless use of paper.
Atlas Shrugged.
This book gets a lot of shit, probably deservedly so, but I enjoyed the story, but skip over the monologue.
I think no one has read Manufacturing Consent beyond the first chapter.
I swear I had all the best intentions, but that book literally taunts me from it's place on the bookshelf where it's been sitting for the past 2 years. Not sure I even made it to chapter 2....
Well the first chapter is very good and reading it will explain why this book is so influential. It's also not very long. You can do it 💪
Thank you! I'm sure I'll get there. So many other books on my 'to read' list, but I'm going to bump this one back up.
I've read the whole thing, but all the interesting bits were definitely in the first chapter. I didn't know anything about the political situation in Nicaragua in the 80s, so it didn't make much sense to me as an example. Was reading more Wikipedia than Chomsky at one point.
All his examples also seemed like very local problems? Like, the New York Times' reporting on the Nicaraguan situation may have been biased, but international NGOs were reporting the truth (which is how Chomsky himself got his information) and newspapers all over the world were reporting that information. I checked the newspaper archives from my own country and when they reported on the cases from the book (which wasn't that often, because South America is pretty far away), they had the same narrative as Chomsky.
So the interesting mechanical bits were definitely in the first chapter and the rest of it was only relevant to 1980s Americans who got all their information from national media.
The maintenance manual for your vehicle.
Yeah, but the ending is sad. I mean, they never say explicitly what'll happen to Lil' Chongo after the 300,000km service, but it's implied...
Ol' Yeller.
Me, pushing my car into a quarry: "Don'tchu be lookin' back now, y'hear? Go'un, git!"
In the wheeze arrrms of the angel... strain, fly away from here! watches roll
I mean I don't buy these, they come with the vehicle. And I do read the sections relevant to what I'm doing.
1984
Fahrenheit 451
People don't read Fahrenheit 451? Or 1984? 🤨
Literally 1984
I read Fahrenheit 451 on a whim one day and the scenario was the exact same one we're in today. Except the fire department in the real world still tries to put out actual fires instead of burning books. We're not that far gone yet.
In my experience a lot of people have read 1984...
You definitely got me on Fahrenheit 451 though :)
Fahrenheit 451 is highly readable.
Do people not read 1984? They should, it's great.
I've not read F451, but I also haven't bought it, so I'm off the hook! :-)
Infinite Jest is just a prop for most college dudebros to present themselves as smart and cool in an effort to get laid.
That's a shame, I love that book.
Take me now, you rugged-but-learnéd dreamboat.
Nelson Mandela's autobiography, A Long Walk To Freedom. So many people want a copy to signal that they're cool and love the idea of the rainbow nation in South Africa, and that racism officially ended™ when Mandela wore a Springbok rugby jersey in 1995.
They don't realise that in his autobiography Mandela says that he takes inspiration from other left wing leaders like Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro, and rips into the ideology of people like F.W de Klerk. If they actually read it, they'd probably be shocked.
infinite jest
Loving that is quick proof that I’m a lib :(
I hate this like neckbeard pseudointellectual misogynistic popular opinion of this book, because it is truly a tender and empathetic and beautiful work
I'm currently reading it. I can see why so many people just leave it in the bookshelf.
It's not a bad book, but God damn does it feel like running a marathon.
It frustrated me, I've been pretty depressed in the past and I felt like I detected all the same thought patterns in it. Not a badly written book but I didn't enjoy what felt like a book written as a sort of self-flagellation
Gravity's rainbow
Ulysses by James Joyce.
I convinced myself it was very important to read this book when I was 17, physically dragged my eyes across ~200 pages of it, and understood nothing of what was happening.
Lmao me with Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (makes sense ig it's just a guys whole childhood)
i liked the hell-fire sermon. My one office job I ever had, I did a dramatic reading of it for an old man and a former improv kid.
Sdgflk I read that part out loud for no reason at a band camp once and nobody was interested. I was a weird kid
highschool textbooks
Among my friend group it's House of Leaves.
"Wow, it's such an eerie unsettling journey. I really love it." "you started it last year, did you finish it?" "well ..."
I saw another lemmy user claim they had to take a 17 year break from it.
I read it, and while it's something different, it was more confusing than anything else. Definitely something I never read before though.
Why exactly would you buy a book and not read it ?
The same reason anyone buys anything that they don’t use, they think they’ll enjoy it but in reality they don’t find time or lose interest.
I’ve got a library’s worth of books, board games, and video games that I’m planning to read/play/consume “at some point” when I get the time. I actually have more content to digest than I probably have time left to live and that’s kind of depressing.
But those things aren't the answer to OP's question, are they? I'm sure that out of all the Harry Potter or DaVinci's Code or whatever whatever popular book you look at there'll be a nice % of books that haven't been read, but I'm pretty sure that a majority of.peoole that buy them also end up reading them.
The more reasonable answer would probably be something that's popular but not necessarily something you read. Like others have said, a dictionary, cookbook, or book related to some other skill. Those are a lot more likely to go unread
The meaning of OP’s question seems blindingly obvious to me, as long as you don’t take it too literally…
I’d say the DaVinci code would be a good answer, I’ve got a copy that I’ve never read. Same with the Harry Potter books as well.
The girl on the train is another book that everyone seems to own, but nobody reads.
Looks good on the book shelf. Many people decorate with books. Look at all those old mansions you see in movies, where there is a giant library.
I guess it's never crossed my mind. I never thought someone would get a book for a reason other than reading it. They do look good in a living room
People buy false books for decoration, so...
I had no idea
I sometimes run into interior design pics where books are organized by spine color, and I gasp and clutch my pearls at the heresy.
...but yes, some people do use books as decorative props instead of as things to be read and enjoyed for their content.
I get it. I didn't imagine books could be purely ornamental, but the consensus seems to be that's not too rare. I personally organise them broadly by genre and theme, so if I have to recommend something to friend I will point at a particular shelf and go "look in there"
So other people think you did read it. Perhaps for the binding color in a background. Maybe to impress people while holding it in a cafe. To burn.
Adhd
I have a few dozen books. A third I've read all the way through, the rest I've picked up and put down or skimmed.
It helps to have a lot of options so that I'm more likely to find one that clicks and holds my attention for longer.
Plus I frequently reference books for specific info or quotes.
I’ve purchased many books that I haven’t physically read.
I mostly read on my Kindle, or I listen to audiobooks. But for books I really love, I will also buy the physical copy to display.
Fair enough, I've never considered that before, but I understand it
I have a pretty decent sized library. My fiction section is about 95% read, but the non-fiction sections are much less. You sometimes buy non-fiction as reference materials, to flip through, etc. Not necessarily to read cover-to-cover. (I'd guess my non-fiction is 25% read.)
Because the book is boring ? Or poorly written ?
Why would you waste money on something that bores you?
Kinda hard to know before reading it.
The OP seemed to imply that not reading the book was always the plan, not because it was dropped halfway through because it's boring. But perhaps I'm reading too much into it
meant to read it then never actually got around to it
Probably meditations or some popular philosophy book.
A Brief History of Time was the classic one amongst self-described sapiosexuals
1984
You're missing out. It's one of the few books I've read and I've thoroughly enjoyed it.
I think that was one of the books that I had already read when we were assigned it in high school...
A lot of hipsters have Bukowski or Hunter Thompson on their shelves that they haven't read. They place them strategically on the corner of their $8,000 coffee table or bookshelf.
What the fuck kind of hipsters do u hang out with lmao
Here’s my molten hot take:
Hell’s Angels was his only good book. All the rest were him just huffing various substances and ranting. We get it, you don’t like Nixon.
Very few people can credibly dispute this because nobody actually reads the books.
Piketty's Capital in XXI century.
I'm not sure I'd call that popular in general. Maybe it is among your friends, though.
For certain sets of people:
Das Capital by Marx
A Critique of Pure Reason by Kant
Ulysses by James Joyce
Do the cutscenes in any given MMORPG count? It's a similar amount of text to a book, but nobody fukken reads that shit.
FFxiv players disagree with you :)
Faust. It's a pain in the ass to actually read. You're better off watching a play.
Thinking Fast and Slow
Sapiens
The Conquest of Bread
hey I read the first third of it before getting bored
harry potter mabye
The art of war. I would say anything by George Orwell but I know for a fact kids are forced to read his shitty fairy tales in high school as a part of their ideological brainwashing
::: spoiler hiding amazing emojis
:::
Kids being forced to read 1984 in high school like “THIS IS LITERALLY 1984”
The art of war is actually quite short though
Imagine the number of stonk devils, business ghouls, and tech demons that have a copy as a library or coffee table decoration piece.
Tbf far from the worst book they haven't read
it's not even relevant if they did read it. It's an instruction manual for running an ancient chinese army
I'm sure it was revolutionary back in the day for warlords to learn that keeping your supply lines defended was important and also you shouldn't fight a battle against an uphill defender with the sun at their back on muddy ground.
Yeah but it's about as relevant to running a business as a manual to use a toaster
We found the conservative
I think they're good books, it's just that they're again and again referred to as "proof that communism was horrible" by people who have not the slightest clue how communism actually was besides what the western governments tell them about it
Written by a British imperial cop who doesn't have the slightest clue about the place he's writing about and relies on his own life experience of oppressing Indians for King and Country to fill in the gaps
Really I found them dull 1984 especially
Demons
The Dostoyevsky novel? I don’t think that qualifies as “popular.” I’d bet money there are far more copies of Crime and Punishment that sit unread on pretentious peoples’ bookshelves thank Demons.