{"id":422,"date":"2008-02-11T07:10:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-11T07:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rbicmsblog.reedbusiness.com\/elogic_660000266\/2008\/02\/11\/faking-it\/"},"modified":"2008-02-11T07:10:00","modified_gmt":"2008-02-11T07:10:00","slug":"faking-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=422","title":{"rendered":"Faking It"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have a confession to make. Until this past week, I had not read The Mysterious Benedict Society<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

I know! I know!! Everyone read this book last year, EVERYONE loved this book, everyone’s been raving about this book, it was on every mock-Newbery list in the country, and my best friend’s husband (Kelly) said I HAD to read it a.s.a.p. because Trenton Lee Stewart’s wife is a friend of his from high school. Kelly, Everyone, I apologize: I just didn’t get to it last year. Just like I didn’t get to even a fraction of all the books I’d hoped to read. As happens every year.<\/p>\n

Here’s what I will say in my defense: At least I didn’t lie about it. I did NOT claim to have read this book. Nope. I might have used evasive language a time or two or avoided contributing to conversations about it and in so doing "suggested" (perhaps even unintentionally!) that I’d read this book, but I never outright LIED about having read it. (At least not that I recall…).<\/p>\n

Why would I even consider lying about such an insignificant thing? Because it’s exhausting to have to endure over and over again the shocked gasp that generally follows admissions of this sort. In their interviews with "Book Brahmins" one of Shelf Awareness<\/a>‘s standard categories to fill in is: "Book You’ve Faked Reading" which I always love seeing and find completely reassuring. ("Whew! I’m not the only one!") It’s tiring to sheepishly recount the reasons that you still haven’t read this book or that book on the neverending list of "books everyone else has read and you know you ought to have read but didn’t and now feel needled by and therefore are less likely to read ever."<\/p>\n

The good news is that The Mysterious Benedict Society<\/em> did not fall so deep into that trap as to become irretrievable for me. I fished it out, I read the book, and by golly I did indeed LOVE it!! I loved it so much, in fact, that I went back and awarded it a Morris Medal<\/a>, which is something I can do, because (of course) it’s my own awards list and I make the rules. I have since moved on to reading the ARC for The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey,<\/em> which will be published in May, and challenging my friends to take the Personality Challenge<\/a> on the official Mysterious Benedict Society website, so I can see how well we’d work as a team. (Apparently I’m most like Reynie.)<\/p>\n

MANY of you recently confessed your propensity for or dislike of or indifference to the idea of peeking<\/a> at a book’s ending: I think it’s now time to confess the books you’ve faked reading or outright lied about.<\/p>\n

In order to establish that we have a trusting relationship here I will not admit publicly that I’ve never read anything by Ernest Hemingway or John Steinbeck. I don’t remember reading Anne of Green Gables<\/em>, which leads me to believe that I never have. I’ve met Eoin Colfer but I haven’t read a single Artemis Fowl book. And I’ve read only one novel by Avi (The End of the Beginning<\/em>, which I loved).<\/p>\n

ARGH! Admit it: You just gasped at that last one, didn’t you?? As recompense you ought now to lay bare some of your own sins. Confess your deepest, darkest reading omissions and\/or fakes right here, where you (unlike me!) have the option of doing so in complete anonymity. I promise I will not use my "connections" (thanks, Kelly) to send the Mysterious Benedict Society out to discover your real identity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have a confession to make. Until this past week, I had not read The Mysterious Benedict Society. I know! I know!! Everyone read this book last year, EVERYONE loved this book, everyone’s been raving about this book, it was on every mock-Newbery list in the country, and my best friend’s husband (Kelly) said I HAD to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}