Picked up from the used book store Saturday. This one has been on my wish list for some time, so when I saw it for a buck I couldn't resist. From the flap:

If civilized people are expected to have read all important works of literature, and thousands more books are published every year, what are we supposed to do in those awkward social situations in which we're forced to talk about books we haven't read? In this delightfully witty, provocative book, a huge hit in France that has drawn attention from critics around the world, literature professor and psychoanalyst Pierre Bayard argues that it's actually more important to know a book's role in our collective library than its details. Using examples from such writers as Graham Greene, Oscar Wilde, Montaigne, and Umberto Eco, and even the movie Groundhog Day, he describes the many varieties of "non-reading" and the horribly sticky social situations that might confront us, and then offers his advice on what to do. Practical, funny, and thought-provoking, How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read is in the end a love letter to books, offering a whole new perspective on how we read and absorb them. It's the book that readers everywhere will be talking about--and despite themselves, reading--this holiday season.

I expected this book to be more fun than it was! It was a rather dry and serious look at a subject that had lost of potential for jollity! I think Bayard takes himself way too seriously. He has a great idea: we often talk about books we haven't read or books we've read so long ago we barely remember them, and that's okay, because if we can place them in the world of literature we have some reference points. He gives examples of actual authors who chose not to read books, or whose memories were bad, etc., and shows how they were still able to converse easily about the books.

It's just that the whole thing could have been so much more fun! I found myself following Bayard's advice and skimming the last part of the book, just to be done with it.

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(Left on the book exchange shelf in the Medical Library.)