If you had to impress someone with your ‘knowledge’ of reading, what names would you drop? Kafka, Nietzsche, Proust, Andre Gide? Or would your choice of authors and books be drawn not from literature and philosophy but from economics and finance? The Landmark Fakespeare Survey, a study by book and leisure store Landmark reveals that 26 per cent of Indians would opt for those latter two subjects, with 22 per cent opting for classic English literature such as books by Charles Dickens.
The motives range from seduction (23 per cent) to aesthetics (13 per cent say they would decorate their homes with impressive titles). Twice as many men (30.7 per cent) would fake read to impress a potential partner as opposed to women (15.5 per cent). And more men (12.6 per cent) than women (7 per cent) would use a book as a fashion accessory! But of course, keep in mind that the larger mass of people surveyed answered No when they were asked if they would ‘fake read’ to impress a potential romantic partner/ dress up with a book.
The top venues for fake reading are airport lounges and coffee shops. Trains, buses and planes are other places where people strive to impress in this manner. Kolkata tops the list of cities with the most people (31.8 per cent) that would fake read. Chennai ranks the lowest. Kolkata also has the largest number of people who would fake read to impress a partner, and its citizens are the most likely to purchase books as an accessory to decorate their home with no intention of actually reading.
Dickens, Asimov, Buffet, Dalai Lama, and even Harry Potter, and poetry, such as Robert Frost’s, are popular choices for fake reading. People aged between 19 and 24 are the most likely (27 per cent) to fake read. The 25-29 year-olds come next (25 per cent). Those aged 35 and above are the least likely to bother with it. The survey was conducted online among almost a 1,000 people across Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata, Pune, Mumbai and Hyderabad.