What Books Should I Read to Impress People?

Dear Literary Lady,
What are some books that are guaranteed to impress people who see me reading them? I have a lot of people to impress this holiday season …
–T.S., Evanston, IL.
Dear T.S.,
I got your back.
What? You thought I was going to get all preachy about how reading is a poignant, personal adventure to be conducted with intellectual integrity, not for the sake of impressing others? I think you already know that. And besides, if you read a book for whatever reason, even if it’s to impress others, at least you’re still reading it.
You might love reading for what it truly is 364 days a year, but I understand that once a year you just want to impress the cute barista with glasses, or your girlfriend’s snooty parents, or your annoying cousin Gerald who’s in law school and won’t stop talking about it.
When you read to impress, try following these guidelines:
1. Go classic
As Mark Twain once said, a classic is “a book that people praise and don’t read.” To truly impress your friends, family, and any random onlookers, you’ve got to be one of those who actually read the classics. Cozy up with a copy of The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner, or Moby Dick, by Herman Melville, and no one will doubt your intellectual prowess.
2. Go old
Somebody’s already beat you to the classics? Up the ante by going further back in time. Read The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer, or heck, go ancient with Homer’s The Iliad.
3. Go postmodern
If old school ain’t your style, you can still blow people away with your postmodern literary proclivities. Flash a copy of Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, or David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest and watch your peers become intellectually intimidated.
4. Go Russian
As a society, we tend to think that things we can’t pronounce sound terribly smart—SAT words, French phrases, Russian novelists. Show off your copy of The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky, and bask in everyone’s admiration.
5. Go with gibberish
If you want everyone’s esteem of you to skyrocket, if you want to play the literary trump card, if you want to assert once and for all your literary superiority—read Finnegan’s Wake, by James Joyce. To 99% of readers, it’s incomprehensible. See if you can join the 1%.
6. Or just read whatever you want
Your genuine enjoyment of a novel, and the enthusiasm with which you talk about it to others, will always be the most convincing and endearing display of your bookish brainpower.
Love and paperbacks,
Literary Lady