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136 books
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5 voters
Pretentious Books
Showing 1-50 of 2,081
The Secret History (Paperback)
by (shelved 30 times as pretentious)
avg rating 4.15 — 1,061,433 ratings — published 1992
The Picture of Dorian Gray (Paperback)
by (shelved 23 times as pretentious)
avg rating 4.14 — 1,922,302 ratings — published 1890
The Fault in Our Stars (Hardcover)
by (shelved 17 times as pretentious)
avg rating 4.12 — 5,780,057 ratings — published 2012
The Stranger (Paperback)
by (shelved 16 times as pretentious)
avg rating 4.03 — 1,442,830 ratings — published 1942
The Catcher in the Rye (Paperback)
by (shelved 16 times as pretentious)
avg rating 3.80 — 3,933,488 ratings — published 1951
The Bell Jar (Paperback)
by (shelved 14 times as pretentious)
avg rating 4.04 — 1,254,174 ratings — published 1963
If We Were Villains (Hardcover)
by (shelved 12 times as pretentious)
avg rating 4.08 — 424,167 ratings — published 2017
The Great Gatsby (Paperback)
by (shelved 12 times as pretentious)
avg rating 3.93 — 5,996,525 ratings — published 1925
This Is How You Lose the Time War (ebook)
by (shelved 11 times as pretentious)
avg rating 3.83 — 351,732 ratings — published 2019
Pride and Prejudice (Hardcover)
by (shelved 11 times as pretentious)
avg rating 4.30 — 4,880,256 ratings — published 1813
Jane Eyre (Paperback)
by (shelved 11 times as pretentious)
avg rating 4.16 — 2,355,620 ratings — published 1847
The Alchemist (Paperback)
by (shelved 11 times as pretentious)
avg rating 3.92 — 3,634,961 ratings — published 1988
The Metamorphosis (Mass Market Paperback)
by (shelved 10 times as pretentious)
avg rating 3.91 — 1,469,090 ratings — published 1915
1984 (Paperback)
by (shelved 10 times as pretentious)
avg rating 4.20 — 5,571,317 ratings — published 1948
The Odyssey (Paperback)
by (shelved 10 times as pretentious)
avg rating 3.84 — 1,211,766 ratings — published -800
Ulysses (Paperback)
by (shelved 10 times as pretentious)
avg rating 3.76 — 139,283 ratings — published 1922
On the Road (Paperback)
by (shelved 9 times as pretentious)
avg rating 3.61 — 452,500 ratings — published 1957
Romeo and Juliet (Mass Market Paperback)
by (shelved 9 times as pretentious)
avg rating 3.74 — 2,847,159 ratings — published 1590
Babel (Hardcover)
by (shelved 8 times as pretentious)
avg rating 4.14 — 497,141 ratings — published 2022
Crime and Punishment (Paperback)
by (shelved 8 times as pretentious)
avg rating 4.29 — 1,107,160 ratings — published 1866
Lolita (Kindle Edition)
by (shelved 8 times as pretentious)
avg rating 3.87 — 957,841 ratings — published 1955
The Goldfinch (Hardcover)
by (shelved 8 times as pretentious)
avg rating 3.97 — 1,054,897 ratings — published 2013
Fahrenheit 451 (Mass Market Paperback)
by (shelved 8 times as pretentious)
avg rating 3.97 — 2,891,903 ratings — published 1953
Nausea (Hardcover)
by (shelved 8 times as pretentious)
avg rating 3.93 — 142,074 ratings — published 1938
The Atlas Six (The Atlas, #1)
by (shelved 7 times as pretentious)
avg rating 3.54 — 282,227 ratings — published 2020
Bunny (Bunny, #1)
by (shelved 7 times as pretentious)
avg rating 3.45 — 344,372 ratings — published 2019
A Clockwork Orange (Paperback)
by (shelved 7 times as pretentious)
avg rating 4.00 — 778,553 ratings — published 1962
The Virgin Suicides (Paperback)
by (shelved 7 times as pretentious)
avg rating 3.78 — 422,619 ratings — published 1993
House of Leaves (Paperback)
by (shelved 7 times as pretentious)
avg rating 4.09 — 204,783 ratings — published 2000
Looking for Alaska (Paperback)
by (shelved 7 times as pretentious)
avg rating 3.96 — 1,762,068 ratings — published 2005
Frankenstein: The 1818 Text (Paperback)
by (shelved 7 times as pretentious)
avg rating 3.91 — 1,935,805 ratings — published 1818
The Handmaid's Tale (Hardcover)
by (shelved 7 times as pretentious)
avg rating 4.15 — 2,473,255 ratings — published 1985
Brave New World (Paperback)
by (shelved 6 times as pretentious)
avg rating 3.98 — 2,104,221 ratings — published 1932
As I Lay Dying (Paperback)
by (shelved 6 times as pretentious)
avg rating 3.72 — 189,411 ratings — published 1930
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (Hardcover)
by (shelved 6 times as pretentious)
avg rating 4.11 — 1,398,039 ratings — published 2022
Play It As It Lays (Paperback)
by (shelved 6 times as pretentious)
avg rating 3.90 — 93,924 ratings — published 1970
Life of Pi (Paperback)
by (shelved 6 times as pretentious)
avg rating 3.94 — 1,765,166 ratings — published 2001
A Little Life (Hardcover)
by (shelved 6 times as pretentious)
avg rating 4.27 — 956,825 ratings — published 2015
Infinite Jest (Paperback)
by (shelved 6 times as pretentious)
avg rating 4.25 — 102,868 ratings — published 1996
Macbeth (Paperback)
by (shelved 6 times as pretentious)
avg rating 3.89 — 1,033,901 ratings — published 1623
Fight Club (Paperback)
by (shelved 6 times as pretentious)
avg rating 4.18 — 650,649 ratings — published 1996
In the Dream House (Hardcover)
by (shelved 5 times as pretentious)
avg rating 4.38 — 165,253 ratings — published 2019
No Longer Human (Paperback)
by (shelved 5 times as pretentious)
avg rating 3.93 — 265,619 ratings — published 1948
Dune (Dune, #1)
by (shelved 5 times as pretentious)
avg rating 4.29 — 1,654,055 ratings — published 1965
Alone With You in the Ether (Hardcover)
by (shelved 5 times as pretentious)
avg rating 3.77 — 110,361 ratings — published 2020
The Midnight Library (The Midnight World, #1)
by (shelved 5 times as pretentious)
avg rating 3.97 — 2,531,986 ratings — published 2020
Wuthering Heights (Paperback)
by (shelved 5 times as pretentious)
avg rating 3.90 — 2,203,130 ratings — published 1847
Norwegian Wood (Paperback)
by (shelved 5 times as pretentious)
avg rating 3.99 — 743,916 ratings — published 1987
Ninth House (Alex Stern, #1)
by (shelved 5 times as pretentious)
avg rating 4.00 — 409,282 ratings — published 2019
Catch-22 (Paperback)
by (shelved 5 times as pretentious)
avg rating 3.99 — 892,924 ratings — published 1961
“If you ask a twenty-one-year-old poet whose poetry he likes, he might say, unblushing, "Nobody's," In his youth, he has not yet understood that poets like poetry, and novelists like novels; he himself likes only the role, the thought of himself in a hat.”
― The Writing Life
― The Writing Life
“don’t be like so many writers,
don’t be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don’t be dull and boring and
pretentious, don’t be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don’t add to that.
don’t do it.”
― Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way: New Poems
don’t be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don’t be dull and boring and
pretentious, don’t be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don’t add to that.
don’t do it.”
― Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way: New Poems
