What Your Favourite Book Says About You
21:16
We've all met that annoying person who asks you what your favourite book is. For most people reading this blog, that person has probably been me. What you didn't know was I wasn't just demanding that you pick one book out of the millions available to define as a 'favourite', ignoring the nuances of mood, context, changing tastes, and artistic subjectivity. I was also making snap judgements about you based on your answer. So if you have a favourite book (or at least claim to when people like me pester you about it) and you'd like to find out what your preference says about you, read on…
The Great Gatsby
You studied this book for your English A Level and were charmed by the glamorous picture of 1920s America that Fitzgerald captured with his beautiful, elegant prose. You're aware that the book is actually a damning and fairly unsubtle condemnation of this hollow, materialistic lifestyle, but you've still attended and/or hosted a Gatsby-themed party because you can be literarily educated and still appreciate a pretty flapper dress.
The Harry Potter series
If you are under the age of twelve you are a normal child. If you are a teenager you probably haven't read anything by choice for about five years. If you are an adult you still haven't come to terms with ageing or mortality and are clinging on to the magical world of Hogwarts to avoid facing up to fact that the inevitable oblivion of death dangles over you like the Sword of Damocles, closer and closer with every passing day.
Wuthering Heights
You have an English Literature degree.
The Stranger
You have a French degree.
One Hundred Years of Solitude
You have a Spanish degree (but you spent your year abroad in Latin America, not Spain).
The Lord of the Rings series
You like exciting, epic adventures. You like them so much that you're willing to struggle through a bloated narrative that waddles through interminable, rambling sub-plots and hours of inconsequential world-building like an obese sloth wading through treacle. In short, you have a lot more patience than I do.
Any poetry book
Your attention span is too short for novels.
On the Road
You care deeply about what other people think of you and have spent a good few years carefully crafting a persona that combines intellectual sophistication with trendy indifference. You probably describe things as 'existential' when they are not existential. You used to say Catcher in the Rye when people asked you this question.
The Old Man and the Sea
Ew. No.
Pride and Prejudice
You're either very into wry observational commentary on the nineteenth-century middle classes or very into Colin Firth.
War and Peace
You're a liar. No one's favourite book is War and Peace.
Disclaimer: I don't actually judge people based on their favourite book. Unless it's by Hemingway.
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