Talking About Books You Haven't Read

I am reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog. It's a French book by Muriel Barbery. A twelve-year-old character describes discussing with her teacher the reason to study grammar. She freaks the teacher out by referring to an authority on the subject.

As it turns out, she's never read anything by the man. She heard someone discussing his work with her mother the night before. So she was talking about writing she had not read.

As luck would have it, a few years ago, I read a very good book called How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard, who is also a French writer. This is the very thing the character in the French novel did. A coincidence? Or is this kind of discussion something the French are particularly interested in?

Of course, I read both books in translation. I always wonder with translations just how much of the book I'm actually getting and how much of what I'm reading is the translator's revision. It's not as if the original authors can tell. If their grasp of English were all that good, they'd do the translations themselves.