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• eric - Mar 20 2007 | books, college, reading, thepugetnews

  An interesting piece asking whether or not it's actually worth it to read all the way through books and stating that it's quite common at the college level "not to."

  I do agree with the one point he makes about it sometimes being easier to draw conclusions from reading less of the book. I read everything I could get my hands on for a holocaust literature course, the required and the optional readins, incclduing some not even on the cirriculum. On the final test, I was a mess of competing theories and ideas scoring worse than in any of my other literature course finals. I still passed but my scores were not an indication of my involvement.

  The University of Paris literature professor Pierre Bayard's best seller "How to Talk About Books That You Haven't Read" is flying off the shelves in France. Not only does Bayard tell readers how to fake literary orgasm, but he admits to giving lectures on books he hasn't bothered to read. I'm sure Bayard's book will be met with outrage from many academics on this side of the Atlantic who lack the French national penchant for public display and intellectual pretension. Obviously, there is something seriously reprehensible about Bayard's know-nothing chutzpah (or whatever the French word for that is). Our goal as teachers is to teach what we know, not what we don't. But, outrage aside, perhaps it's time to admit that not reading has its virtues as well as its vices.