Lying about reading books

From Charlie Brooker I pick up on impressing people by lying about the books you've read. Sadly neither him nor the Guardian deign to give us the full list of the top ten lies and I turn to the Telegraph instead. Interesting.

1. 1984 - Yep read it and also Brave New World, which I preferred.
2. War and Peace, nope and never wanted to as the synopsis makes it sound duller than ditchwater.
3. Ulysses. Sounded depressing. Stick to the 80's animated cartoon.
4. The Bible. Yep in a variety of versions add the Koran and Torah too.
5. Madame Bovary. Nope, heard of it but it's never really blipped on my radar screen.
6. A Brief History of Time. Yep though I wished he'd used the more concise equations rather then try to turn them into paragraphs.
7. Midnight's Children. Sounded like a story with a political bias whacking you in the head repeatedly over its parallels.
8. In Remembrance of Things Past. Nope, like Bovary zero blips.
9. Dreams from My Father. Even the title makes me want to throw up. Nope.
10. The Selfish Gene. Yep and dare I say even understood it, which seems to be more than some.

I'll add Lord of the Rings, I preferred The Hobbit; Animal Farm, about as subtle as 1984; Plato's Republic; Machiavelli's Discourses; Spinoza's Ethics; and both The Iliad and Odyssey.

Onto the authors we apparently do like reading

1. JK Rowling. Yeah alright about as well written as Dan Brown, but still something you can curl up with.
2. John Grisham. Nope just never have.
3. Sophie Kinsella. Never heard of her.
4. Jilly Cooper. Gods no.
5. Mills & Boon. As above.
6. Dick Francis. Nope
7. Robert Harris. Yep I enjoyed Fatherland.
8. Jeffrey Archer. Nope, but my mother used to.
9. Frederick Forsyth. Nope.
10. James Herbert. Yep still enjoy the Rats trilogy.

I'll add the obvious Terry Pratchett; Iain M. Banks; Jasper Fforde; Philip K. Dick and Isaac Asimov. I'll throw in Greg Bear; Harry Harrison; and Diana Wynne Jones for good measure too.

There does that establish/refute my high-brow credentials :-P