Three Steps to Impressing People with Your Reading Prowess

Alas and alack, reading seems to have become a lost art, drowned out by more Informative things like the internet, and by more Entertaining things like television.  People assume that if a person likes to read, said person is academically-minded. So, since they’re going to be impressed by the fact that you are reading anyway, let’s take it a step further:

First, choose a book that is a classic. Yes, everyone knows of Frankenstein or Winnie the Pooh. But few have actually read the books that share the characters’ names. What’s the use of reading The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas if nobody knows you’re reading an awesome espionage book by the author of The Three Musketeers? Not very effective in astounding passersby with your magnificent literacy, is it? No, better not to discover forgotten treasures, or at least read them in private. When reading in public, find something more hum-drum or popular. 

Second, sometimes you might be able to find an Annotated or Fully Illustrated edition. This causes what might have been a short children’s paperback novel to become a large, thick, hefty hardcover not to be trifled with. I’m thinking in particular of copies of Alice in Wonderland or The Phantom Tollbooth.  

Third, choose a book that has a lot of academic journaling to it. When a book is a classic, it invariably will have lots of stodgy professors writing boring essays about it. These essays, forwards, introductions, afterwards, commentaries, appendices, et al., are included at the front, back, and the footnotes of any self-respecting classic book, and will multiply the pages. Not only will this make it look to the innocent bystander that you are reading a book much longer than you actually are, if you skip these mostly superfluous commentaries you will seem to be reading at a break-neck pace, further impressing onlookers. 

Shakespearean plays are especially good for this purpose. I once had a copy of The Taming of the Shrew where half of the book was introduction and afterward, and even once I got into the text of the play half of the pages were comprised of footnotes.