books you have bought just to display so people think you're clever

[madhair60]

be completely and totally honest here. which books have you bought and put out on shelves so people will see them and go ooh here's a clever cunt. which books do you hide away at the back or in boxes and that, the books you actually like, and which ones are out like yeah check me out. tell the fucking truth.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I bought going to see a performance of an Elgar piece so people would think I am clever, that's a book, same thing

[Mr_Simnock]

none

[chveik]

bought loads of books i've ended up being too lazy to read. it never meant to impress people though, i'm not that insecure

[madhair60]

thread full of FUCKING LIARS.

[buttgammon]

All the big ones

[ProvanFan]

[Kankurette]

None, because I don't buy books I don't want to read. I am reading Crime and Punishment but it was my dad's old copy and I found it in my basement.

[imitationleather]

bought loads of books i've ended up being too lazy to read. it never meant to impress people though, i'm not that insecure

This. Although the books I turn out to be too lazy to read are pretty much always the big and clever ones that would be liable to impress people if they ever came round and inspected me shelves.

[Gregory Torso]

Dictionary, thesaurus, bumper book of Sudoku, i like to flex my brain muscles. Next to them, oh just a little book called The Bible, that's the words of Jesus, I like to reflect on them every so often. And next to that? 'Why I'm An Athiest', bet you weren't expecting that, that's right you don't know where this book shelf is going. Lonely Planet guides to Laos, Moldova, Timor-Leste, not that I need them, I go a country and just feel my way around it. The Tropic Of Cancer, don't even know what it is mate. Speak Conversational Chinese, some day kemosabe, i will. Japanese Death Poems. Jamie Theakston's Traffic Cops: The Court Transcripts.

[Small Man Big Horse]

None, and I think it's a bit of a weird thing to do. I've bought plenty of quite complicated books in an effort to challenge myself, but if I don't finish them they're off to a charity shop.

[Jerzy Bondov]

I took all the pages out of my books and I keep wank rags in there. There. is that what you wanted

[touchingcloth]

What's the most impressive book, and where sells it most cheaply?

[buttgammon]

What's the most impressive book, and where sells it most cheaply?

The Da Vinci Code, £0.01, Oxfam.

[Johnny Foreigner]

I bought Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations in my student days and placed it prominently on a shelf in my room. This was over twenty years ago and I have still not read it. I suppose it was largely an act of recalcitrance, as I was in the humanities, largely surrounded by latter-day communists and whatnot, whom I thereby unsuccessfully tried to provoke. On the other hand, there were some free-market supporters in my corridor as well (i.e., law students), who didn't really give a toss either. It was a pointless exercise.

[JesusAndYourBush]

None, because I don't buy books I don't want to read.

Same here.  The only book I have which I haven't read and don't want to is The Book Of Mormon which I don't recall where it came from but I must've been given it by a Mormon and although I don't want to read it it doesn't seem right to throw it in the bin.  It's on the shelf between a book on Radio Comedy and a Chronicles of Narnia box set I've had since I was a child but only read fully about 5 years ago, as a child I only got to halfway through book 4.

[buttgammon]

Looking at my bookshelves here (the ones that were displayed in the background when I was teaching on Zoom so wanted to show-off) and the only books I haven't read are ones in my to be read pile and ones that belong to my girlfriend, which she's read.

[maett]

None but in my 20s I did borrow Hawking's A  Brief History of Time from the local library under the impression that if I paid attention and read carefully I'd be able to follow it. Took me about 8 pages to realise how wrong/deluded I had been. The librarians showed no sign of being impressed or disdain when I checked it out and returned it several days later,

[Ham Bap]

Dictionary

[bgmnts]

The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky.  Got through the first 200 pages or so and it's just on the bedside table being used a massive coaster.

It's more to convince myself i'm cleverer and more intellectual than I am, as nobody else on earth will know I have it lest I tell them.

[Chollis]

120 Days of Sodom

[PlanktonSideburns]

Looks like it's just you mads

[Dex Sawash]

Reading For Dummies

[Famous Mortimer]

The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky.  Got through the first 200 pages or so and it's just on the bedside table being used a massive coaster.

It's more to convince myself i'm cleverer and more intellectual than I am, as nobody else on earth will know I have it lest I tell them.

There's a modern translation (Pevear and Volokhonsky) which makes it more easily readable, and I think it's bloody brilliant. Although the naming convention (where everyone seems to have three different names, used interchangeably) began to grate on me after a while.

[dissolute ocelot]

I bought this in German despite my German skills being not great then, and much worse now. I haven't got past the title page.

[buttgammon]

I bought this in German despite my German skills being not great then, and much worse now. I haven't got past the title page.

You've reminded me that I do have a book I haven't read in my big showy bookcase, and it's been sat there unread for so long I forget it's there. It's a book about James Joyce's time in Zürich that I got for an aborted chapter of my thesis. It's all in German, a language where I can barely muddle my way through a basic menu, but I know enough German speakers that I was hoping someone would translate bits for me if it turned out to be more useful. It's a nice oversized book with some interesting pictures so I kept it anyway.

[madhair60]

Looks like it's just you mads

i've never bought a book

[studpuppet]

ALL the books I have on display are to make people think I'm clever. Why the fuck would I even buy a book in the first place?!

[holyzombiejesus]

In my teens I went through a stage of buying or shoplifting those Thames and Hudson 'World of Art' books. It wasn't really so other people thought I was clever, more that I wanted to feel like I was bohemian and not some gauche drip who lived with his mum in Newcastle-Under-Lyme. Relatively recently (ie in the last 20 years or so) I bought a big thick book called For Ever Godard which I knew I would never read but had a nice spine that would look good on my shelves.

[thenoise]

120 Days of Sodom

I found an online text as a teenager, which someone claimed to have uploaded to practice their typing. I wouldn't have had the guts to actually buy it.
Only managed to read parts of it, its pretty much impenetrable. But impressively grubby.