The Guardian book blog (how did I miss this for so long?) has in interesting post today about adults who lie about what they read to impress others. (The inference here, I'm guessing, is that children don't lie about such things.) Bookninja extends this conversation by highlighting the all-important book shelf scan when visiting someone's home. I've done it. You've done it. We've all done it. Friendships, certainly romantic relationships, have come to a halt or pressed fully forward based on the results of such scanning.
Yet, what caught my eye was the bit about the books we don't want others to know we read:
"This might tell you that I am fascinated by American politics, try to understand science, love food, and am an unreconstructed feminist with a romantic streak. It will not tell you that I am hopelessly disorganized, prone to fretting and general first world guilt, and scarily obsessed by my two beautiful black dogs. It will also not reveal the existence of my secret cupboard of shame, where a horrid streak of intellectual snobbery drives me to hide Agatha Christie, Georgette Heyer and Dick Francis, in case anyone should point and laugh."
I know several bloggers of all stripes (lit, design, music, etc.) who don't list certain books in their "just read" or "currently reading" columns. Sandra at Book World (who has just made a lovely shift in her blog from covering books to covering writing and books about writing) mentions that she would never place these books about writing in her left-hand column. Instead of gasping at her declaration, I thought: my god, I do the same thing.
Last year, when I was on my big matchy-matchy rant, I read all of Emily Giffin's books. I know, I know. Don't mock. I felt that to properly criticize her, I had to know what I was talking about. So I read them. Will you find them listed in my 2006 Books Read list? Nope. I've been secretly shamed about this for awhile now. Why didn't I include them? Was I that caught up in what others thought - what others might think -- of me as a writer, thinker, reader that I couldn't list them? Yes, it seems.
My next thought was: well at least I don't pretend to have read books that I haven't. That seems a far worse offense. Or is it? Isn't the shame -- for those who haven't read something they feel they should & those who've read something they'd rather not advertise -- and the hiding of said shame, equal on both sides? I wonder. While I continue to probe this question & my own guilt (no doubt induced by a brand of crazy that only my christian school education could provide), I reserve the right to leave these aforementioned read-but-not-going-to-admit-it books off my public "Books I've Read List."
What, if you're willing to share, is your secret reading shame? Any answers will remain in comments and will not, I repeat, not, make their way into your blog reading columns. (That update script isn't quite finished yet.) To extend the shame game far and wide, I'll go first: I've read every Clive Cussler book ever published (I like that Dirk Pitt guy), every Agatha Christie, and I have a slew (by slew I mean dozens) of writerly advice books that are not worth the paper they're printed on and are carefully hidden behind other books on my shelves. (This sharing thing is easier said than, well, you know.)
