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?

bigreadernobooks
So, rather like what you are doing here to the OP?

thebewilderness

I'm sorry. Am I missing something? I don't get the gist of your comment.

Pretentious would be having a bookshelf full of books you had never read, but pretended you had, to make yourself look better! You’re not pretending to have read them, therefore yanbu, nor pretentious!

Keeping books on a shelf in your home is pretentious now? Ooft.

My do doesn’t get books either. I think,you are either a hooky person or not.

@YeTYalkShiteHen

Reading books
Tasting wine
Concerned about proper SPaG ...

All hallmarks of the pretentious.

The rise of 'anti-intellectualism' (for want of a better description!) is alarming, I think. People who are proud never to have done something like read a book, or who will defend poor SPaG.

I think it all boils down to intolerance, so many of the problems on MN and in RL are caused by people unwilling to recognise that not everyone thinks/behaves they way they do and castigating them for it.

My Mum was a librarian, my dad was a teacher when I was a child before he changed professions, I grew up in a house heaving with books. I love books. DP is profoundly dyslexic, and he doesn’t. Neither of us is wrong.

Ach I just wish there wasn’t just sneering about the choices other people make.

Many years ago, so I don’t know if it’s still true, my HV also commented on the bookshelves in my home. She said it reassured her when she saw this - it was a small part of her assessment but she did say she always worried a little when there were no books on show in homes with children. I realise some people might keep them in cupboards but I know kids are curious and they will learn to pick books up if they are around. Not pretentious at all.

Your dh is quietly envious of your education I’ll wager. You are educated to a higher level than him and the books remind him of that fact. When he says ‘pretentious’ he really means ‘cleverer than me and I don’t like it’.
Tell him to fuck off. And read a book.

BIWI
The rise of 'anti-intellectualism' (for want of a better description!) is alarming, I think. People who are proud never to have done something like read a book, or who will defend poor SPaG.

Couldn’t agree more with this^. Spot on - DH and I are constantly aghast at what we describe as the dumbed down seeming to think they are cool being so outrageously happy at such accolades. I actually work with someone who’s really happy to announce that she “ can’t read books”, usually said when we are all discussing what we are reading. She’s also really proud that she “can’t cook” even though we have to listen to the 3pm chime every day of “ oh god what shall I make tea tonight”. Gently suggest she prepares meals and shops at the weekend to both be organised and save money but it apparently is another thing she “can’t do”. Yet I suspect she thinks I’m pretentious too!

Interesting. I have never thought of books on bookshelves as pretentious tipis or having your books ‘on display’. I’ve sort of seen them as functional and homely. But I suppose they will get increasingly rare with ebooks and things so seen as more of s statement?

Unless you have the books face forward with an individual display light shining on them UANBU.

@YeTalkShiteHen: I grew up in a house heaving with books.

I did too. They were on shelves in the bedrooms, in boxes in wardrobes and cupboards, in storage in the garage. However, I don't think many were kept on shelves in the communal areas.The judgmental HV mentioned above by someone else would have been appalled at our illiterate household. Nowhere was there obvious evidence on display of the 4/5 books that each person in the house read each week.

We were all library users, fortunate to be living in a place with lots of good libraries. The books that were kept were especially loved books or those belonging to my older brothers and kept for me me to inherit. I can remember it as a rite of passage, when I was about six or seven and the collection of my brothers' Famous Five and Adventure books were given to me. It was decades ago (yuck,more decades than I really want to recall) but I can still remember the thrill.

All my childhood books were lent to children of my parents' friends. Except I never got them back

People always seem to take the piss of my bookcase when they come over. I have two shelves of foreign language literature and dictionaries and then a shelf of chick lit right under the poncy stuff. Everyone says it looks really funny to have the high and low brow stuff together. I don’t care- I have books that need to go on a bookshelf.

I read all the time-my dining room is lined with books. (My dream is to have a library!)

That's my dream too Sue! For some reason it would also need to have a ladder and a globe though

DH and I are constantly aghast at what we describe as the dumbed down seeming to think they are cool being so outrageously happy at such accolades.

I've honestly not seen this. All I see these days is a culture where everyone tries to appear literate and well read.

My book shelf is unashamedly pretentious. I keep the books that make me look clever and recycle the pulp!

It's none of his business, really, is it?

I've got 3 big bookshelves full, some are from Uni and in Latin or Greek. Never thought it was pretentious! There's some Jackie Collins and Jilly Cooper on there too which balances it out

Your DH is insecure and that is entirely his problem. You might decide to ask him why he chose to joke about that rather than accepting your difference to him.

The person I know who possesses the most books was deprived the opportunity of education from the age of 16 when they were forced to leave home. She is the most intellectually curious person I know and has broad knowledge of history, politics, feminism, religion, philosophy. She inhales books. She reads walking along the pavement, and since she is on a low income she buys books in Charity shops and is always always keen to swap books with others.

Glacier mint is right, like so many things it depends on how it’s done, if you genuinely read them fair enough, if there’s an element of displaying to impress it’s different.

It sounds more like the University bit to me than the books tbh - is your time at University recent, because if not that might be what has triggered your DH (and you did say it was jokey).

Do you consider the books to be 'on display' or simply stored on the bookshelf? Is is the only bookshelf in the house (tbh, ours are upstairs). Books that were study/textbook-type books are usually stored away because I don't tend to read them again.

His comment reminded me of Gaston

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

I have a wide range of books, my dp doesn't read if he doesn't have to, but never says anything
We've had to move the bookcase into the bedroom because DD eats paper

YANBU.

My DP isn’t a reader which pains me slightly as an English literature grad and now English teacher but he doesn’t think I am pretentious because I do read.

You’re only pretentious if you own the books purely for display having never read them.