A Bookish Confession

Ariel Zeitlin recently posted for Reader’s Digest a list of 10 books* people lie about reading. There are a lot of these lists around the internet, all more or less supported by actual data, but I’m not bothered about their accuracy. Instead, seeing these lists reminds me of a bookishly naughty thing I did twenty some odd years ago.

When I was in high school before the turn of the millennium, I was taking my first foray into an honors course: English. (My second foray, in history, was less successful—partly because my teacher insisted on pronouncing the name of the famous Polish astronomer as Copper-nick-us.) During the fall semester, our teacher gave us the option of reading either Pride & Prejudice or Frankenstein. I had already read Pride & Prejudice, but I wasn’t about to pass up a chance to read it again. But then, for some reason that is lost to the cluttered recesses of my memory, I chose to write a paper about Frankenstein.

I don’t know what the topic of the paper was. What I do remember is that I got an A. For a book I didn’t read. The story of Frankenstein’s monster had apparently permeated my little corner of the zeitgeist for me to cogently write about it.

Mea culpa.

I ended up reading Frankenstein later, in college. When I finally read the book, hyped up by expectations fueled by monster movies, I hated it. I was bored as pants. So much philosophizing! So much Romantic moodiness! So little action! In retrospect, it’s probably a good thing I didn’t read the book in high school when I wrote that paper. Who knows what I would have come up with?

• I’ve read all but two of the books on this list. Really.