I can't resist list challenges, especially the ones about books...

[cloudsinvenice]

...but this is an incredibly weird list:

http://www.listchallenges.com/books-youll-never-brag-about-having-read/

I mean, there are the obvious blockbusters that people love to mock, like Twilight, 50 Shades of Grey and The Da Vinci Code, but otherwise a lot of the significance escapes me; they seem to be American popular political/psychological hits, plus the odd work of Nazi propaganda that a lot of history students will actually have read because they're studying the period.

Anyway, I've read 12/100, and I've got Peyton Place on the shelf waiting for me to get round to it...

Comments

[birke]

Some of them I recognize as books you are assumed to have read for the sexy bits. Many I don't recognise. Some I'm surprised to see on the list. :shrug: It does indeed seem a bit idiosyncratic.

[cloudsinvenice]

And there's a few of those books that were huge "true-life sensation"-type things and which then turned out to be fictitious...

[birke]

I don't think I recognized any of those. Speaking of, though, I do have Mutant Message Down Under on my shelf and do not brag about it.

[cloudsinvenice]

Oh yeah, I read that a couple of years ago and then found all the stuff online debunking it!

[gairid]

I've read twenty of those things! Jacqueline Susann -- considered risque back in my high school years.Jonathan Livingston Seagull was what every teen girl read in 1971 or so; The Satanic Bibe is hilariously silly. Hammer of the Gods! I still have that book! The Rolling Stones & John Lennon tomes, The Amityville Horror (that house is right across Long Island Sound from my hometown---we all piled in the car one time to go see it.) DaVinci Code. OMG, Peyton Place! My mom had that hidden in her room, so of course I read it..I think I was 11 and it was already an old book by that time.

It's a weird list, though--so all over the place.

I see Mater's Sleeping Beauty made the list!

[cloudsinvenice]

Hammer of the Gods is one of those rock books I've always meant to read!

And yeah, had to laugh at (and of course tick) Sleeping Beauty!

[tree]

that is a very odd list. i've read three, all in my early teens oddly enough.

i haven't read 'battlefield earth' but i did see the terrible movie and oh god it is so hilarious. it's not supposed to be a comedy but it totally is.

[cloudsinvenice]

Yeah, when I first got into online movie fandom it was THE go-to mockable movie. I've always meant to see it for the lulz!

[lunabee34]

Ha! I also have read 12 although probably not the same 12.

I am sad that Stanyan Street and Other Sorrows is on that list, though. I love that book.

[cloudsinvenice]

I feel like every list of this sort has books that make you go, "Oi! That was good!" :D

[mumsisdaughter]

I have read Chariots of the Gods and thought it sensationalist and under-researched at the time. I remember feeling indignant that anyone would think humans incapable of building/making things in the past.

Also Jonathan Livingston Seagull because I was nurturing a gull with a broken wing at the time so of course it was called Fred Maynard Gull and I liked the photographs. I also have Neil Diamond's OST from the film.

Pride and Prejudice with Zombies, which I love because I laughed all the way through it.

I also have Mater's Sleeping Beauty trilogy but haven't read them.

[cloudsinvenice]

I think my mum had Chariots of the Gods back in the day; he's certainly one of those authors-a-Fortean-is-aware-of, but I heard the debunkings before I got around to reading him! At least there seems to be more talk these days about how subtly racist that stuff can be in its assumptions...

Random weird list

[(Anonymous)]

Hi. I created this list. Are you really going to tell a first date that you've just finished Dr. Ruth's "Sex for Dummies?"

Re: Random weird list

[cloudsinvenice]

I dunno, depends how sporkable it is; that could end up being an entertaining conversation in itself!