A British study finds that 44 percent of Londoners have bought a book for the purpose of impressing other people. That number seems a bit low to me, especially if you take into account all the underlying psychological reasons for reading (i.e., not only the sight of a book on your coffee table, but your ability to convincingly talk about said book at a Lower East Side bar – or Tottenham Road bar, to stick with the study’s origin).
In last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, the Freakonomics boys argued that citizens in democratic countries excercise their right to vote mostly to maintain their social standing with other people. Reading might not follow exactly the same formula — in fact, since books primarily offer an interior experience, you could argue that reading them offers little social incentive (after all, you can talk about them without actually reading them) — but it’s an interesting parallel as far as it goes. I can’t wait until it’s proven that everything we do — commuting, eating, sleeping — is done to impress other people. Then it will finally become clear that the world is just a giant cafeteria from a WB show, and that this intelligent designer we’ve been hearing so much about is none other than Aaron Spelling.
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