And why I believe they haven't read them. It's a common claim that people have read certain books they believe have some level kudos attached. Sometimes they have seen the film and mention something that is not in the book. Or you make a clever quip about their social status due to them playing the lottery and awaiting the result in front of a telescreen. They become overly offended and jump on their middle class high horse as you realise they only went on about 1984 to justify watching the tv (reality) show Big Brother. Oh yeah, they've got calss...
Simples. They suddenly find themselves in company where having read {the books these people seems to care about} is de rigueur, and not having read them means you not in, mate. Why anyone would do so is pretty clear to me. How anyone gets away with it with even the slightest poke at the story is another question entirely.
It's like people claim to have seen films, a classic claim is Birdman of Alcatraz... It's not a spoiler but he never had birds at Alcatraz, he was the birdman prior to Alcatraz being built. So one simple statement (lie) from you about the birds he kept at Alcatraz and you realise they haven't seen it.
It is a bit risky to say the least. the best thing to do is wait for the next topic to talk about. a movie as far as I am concerned does not project a book in its entirety, in fact a movie always tries and alter facts from the book to make it more alluring.
It's a way of appearing to be more intellectual, if they really were a little more cleverer they wouldn't lie and get caught out.
Not necessarily so. Sometimes the full content of a book just doesn't fit within a two hour film, and a series of films isn't always practical either. Just look how stretched and bloated The Hobbit films were. Sometimes the nature of a story in text just doesn't translate well to the screen. Sometimes the content is more controversial than whoever is making the film wants to deal with. There are endless reasons for changing the storyline from page to screen. Suffice to say the two mediums are not completely interchangeable. Examples: In The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, an entire main character was deleted from the book version to the screen version. Had they left the character in, the film would have been 100% in the LGBTQ+ listing, rather than just having a disposable gay element at the tail end of the film. The recent film Annihilation actually takes three books and reduces them to one film. Le sigh... Those books were so good. The film was intriguing, but ultimately a serious disappointment because sooooooo many elements were missing to run as a single film, and the elements that remained got wickedly repurposed in order to account for what you didn't see from the books.
@Wreybies The film Stand By Me taken from The Body, that was changed but everyone knows Stand By Me so they can say they read the book
There's a lot of films about "El Quijote" so I guess 85% of the current Spanish population haven't read it. Some people thinks it's embarrasing to say the thruth. I didn't read it. Not all of it, anyway. But I know the story. (Who doesn't?) What I actually read was Cervantes' sequel, where Alonso de Quijana finally realizes that he's been acting a little nuts. That second book exists because Cervantes was really tired of finding "apocryphes" (or whatever it has to be writen) books about his character and wanted to put an end. So he killed Alonso and buried the bussines of all those lousy writers. Now that I think iof it, there was a lot of Spanish Fun Fiction literarure in the seventeen century.
I'm not sure failing to recognise parts from a book is a sure-fire way to determine said person has never read it. I have read 1984, but I can tell you very little about it, and wouldn't be able to contribute very much at all during a conversation about the book.
Yeah, I know the type... and always grinds my gears. I think 1984 is generally a popular claim (which is weird - it's rather short and written very accessibly, not to mention it's an exciting story...) Another popular one is Ulysses (which makes more sense because it is bloody difficult) In my family in particular I've found many who claim to have read every Dickens novel, but I haven't come across that with other people
Yes, I think also some of the classics like the Illiad or other classics like war and peace are often said to be read. However, the biggest culprit, I think, is the bible or the name of the religious text of whatever religious the person claims to be with. Just because you own a bible and claim to be Christian does not mean he/she/it has ever read it... but they do claim to have read it when ever they are questioned.. perhaps because they think it is an affront to them or their religion? (By they I mean people who claim to have read the bible but have not) There is always the flip side to this entire...occurance: people that claim to have never read a book when they have. But that is usually because that book is considered terrible and people wanted avoid the shame of having read it.... a good example of this is Pretty much 60% of the male population and the twilight series.
