DH thinks I’m being pretentious

[ramalamadingdong1]

This is so ridiculous but DH and I have been having a jokey arguement about this tonight and I think he IBU but I’m prepared to be told different.

I’ve recently bought a shelves for our living room and have started putting book on it. I’m an avid reader and fluentish in another language having studied it at university and lived in the country. I’ve put the English versions of the books I studied on the shelf and love getting them down to read parts of them.

My DH is not a reader and can’t understand this. However, a friend of his was round the other night and commented on the books. I explained I’d studied them at university in their original language and still enjoyed reading them albeit in English.

Tonight my DH laughingly said he thought I sounded pretentious going on about university and keeping these books on display. I only answered a question about them and there were plenty of other books there!

Now I’m wondering if I should just hide my books!

WIBU to display them?

Well your DH would hate my house - it’s slowly sinking under the weight of the books in every room, including 90 feet of bookshelves in the attic! One entire wall of the sitting room is bookcases, with two more on the adjoining wall, and they’re on three sides of the hall!
I send sackloads I’ve finished reading to charity shops when I run out of room, but can never resist buying more.
How could he not want to be surrounded by your lovely books? Heretic! Burn him!

Crikey. If anyone is BU it’s sure as heck not you!

Books in the original language, with translations hidden upstairs, might qualify as pretentious if you only read the English versions but wanted to appear more erudite...but you’ve done the opposite. Ignore him, OP

It's not right for a woman to read. Soon she starts thinking and getting ideas...

it doesn't sound pretentious but I suppose if you have main bookshelves elsewhere in the house and you are particularly choosing certain books to go in the living room because you know they will be seen by visitors and want to create an educated impression it could be construed as pretentious but it seems a bit unlikely and depends a bit on what the books are.

Some Victor Hugo or Charlotte Bronte not really. If it's Ulysses, Finnegan's Wake and À la recherche du temps perdu he might have a point.

You are not pretentious, he is chippy as fuck with a massive inferiority complex.

YANBU at all !! due to a varied and nomadic lifestyle in the past I am a fluent speaker of 5 languages - my bookshelves are overflowing with books of all sorts in all of the languages and would be very offended if anyone thought I was being pretentious .... I love to read and reread them all and enjoy thinking about the good times I had living and travelling in those countries !!! I have for example Marian Keyes in English Spanish and Italian - John Grisham in English French and Spanish ... Dante's Classics ....

University accountancy books ... Bronte Classics ..Plato's Republic totally random.. not at all high brow... just mementos of my life.....

Your DH is being silly - just ignore .....

DH does have a friend with a bookshelf of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky on display though, but I know that she reads mostly Jilly Cooper and Danielle Steele. I have had a chuckle to myself!

Books...on bookshelves? Whatever next?! You’ll probably want to be putting clothes in wardrobes and food in the fridge. I know your type!

Not pretentious at all. Is he a bit thick?

It's a bookcase.. tell him to get over it!

So to clarify, it's not just about books on book shelves, - you have a special area for translated english language books that you have read in their original language?

Lethaldrizzle by special area do you mean a bookshelf ?Because that's what the Op outlined.

he is chippy as fuck with a massive inferiority complex

yep, sounds like it. i wouldn't be impressed.

YABU
Obviously you should stay in the kitchen where women belong and keep busy with womanly tasks, then you wouldn't have time to read books, especially books translated from a foreign language.
As for having been to university, well that should never have been allowed, it's clearly given you ideas above your lowly woman status.

Oh I love books. They should always be on display. I love going to someone's house and looking at their book collection. If you were truly pretentious you would display the foreign language books at the front only!

YADNBU...I couldn't live in a house without my books on show.

He sounds a bit insecure.

It's not right for a woman to read. Soon she starts thinking and getting ideas...

Pen is envy.

That doesn’t sound the least bit pretentious I agree with previous posters he sounds chippy about his own education.

It’s jot pretentious.

Pretentious would be googling ‘books to make you look intelligent ’ and buying those and putting them on the shelf unread.

I love having a good nose at other people`s books. If you hide them, how can I do that?

He is very definitely BU.

Books are amazing - every room in our house that I can fit shelves into has books in it. Alongside all the fiction and general interest stuff I also have my technical books, from four separate degree subjects, on the shelves. They're my books and they need to live somewhere.

From your post though I wonder if your DH shares the attitude that people should hide or be embarrassed about their learning/education/interests in case it makes others feel uncomfortable/inferior? It isn't an attitude that makes sense to me but I've come across it before.

Elves belong on shelves

Now I’m wondering if I should just hide my books

This is MN. It's not like anyone is going to say YABU.

He's being an arse.
Books are lovely prized possessions. I can't understand anyone kvetching about showing them.
The only people who object to them are people threatened or intimidated by them.
Your OH needs a slap in the chops from reality.