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?

How on earth are your books on your shelf on display? I'd understand if they were all individually displayed as pictured but your dh is being daft. According to him my fruit bowl is 'on display.' As is my TV magazine and my dying pot plant

This, exactly. This is my 'only on Mn' moment, every time I see the 'visible books in house = Books On Display = Showing Off' thing and 'the truly modest bibliophile should keep all books invisibly on a Kindle, or if s/he REALLY HAS TO HAVE ACTUAL BOOKS AROUND, they should be kept in a plastic storage box under the spare room bed and only taken out one at a time when actually being read, in case they make a visitor think you are pretentious.'

I mean, I have literally never encountered this attitude in RL, but as I do not think Mn is a separate universe, it must be out there, and I should be grateful to Mn for showing me that there is a whole world of people who think that you should never have more than one book you are reading and one you are about to start, and the second you finish one you must take it to the charity shop, otherwise you are a clutter-loving show off.

Why is owning books you'll probably never read again pretentious? I have reference books, poetry books, a lot of classics and some general stuff.

Some of it like the poetry and the classics I will dip into from time to time, the reference books I keep because they are books on a subject I learned and still find interesting and the general stuff I might pick up and read again or I might not but if I've enjoyed them I like to keep them. How is any of that pretentious. I like books.

The vast majority of people who come to my house have no idea what's on my book shelves because they are in a room upstairs that most people won't go into.

I'm most certainly not keeping them to impress strangers or anyone else come to that. I keep them because I like to have them. Most of them feel like old friends.

Seems like in this country it's okay to fill your house with a load of plastic tat but own books and you're considered some sort of pretentious weirdo.

My above post was in answer to PolkaDotting's post.

Build more shelves! Fill them with more books!

Your husband is being a pillock. We probably have a couple of thousand books - we have books from all of the different areas we've both studied. Sometimes people raise an eyebrow at the more esoteric ones but everyone who knows us knows we love to read and learn and we love lending them to people.

Ok I'm 99% there's absolutely nothing pretentious about having books on display. I love a full bookcase and like seeing a wide range of books......it's interesting. However......there's a bit of a difference between having a full library/bookcase and having a display shelf with carefully selected, sufficiently boastful, "please ask me about these" types of books. I'm not saying that's what you've done OP, sounds like you have books there that you read (although not sure why the two different language thing is relevant) but my SIL does this and it is pretentious. She will buy an impressive looking book just to put it on display in the hope she will be asked about it. We've been to stay and had Latin and philosophy books left randomly by our bed in the spare room. She does it to try and impress us by her intelligence, not because she actually enjoys the books.

I’m an English and American literature graduate. DH has barely ever finished a book. He didn’t bat an eyelid when we had to redesign the entire living room to fit my books in, and he’d never even think about calling me pretentious.

I can’t remember if it was on here or on another forum, but the premise was a poster refusing to believe someone who had given one of the classics as their favourite book because it was simply them being pretentious.

User467 Okay, yes your SIL is being pretentious with that behaviour. Rather like people who only watch television for the news and documentaries.

I will take a slight issue with the word "display" (don't kick me please :)). The books are not "displayed" - as that word implies "to impress/intimidate". The shelves is simply where they live. Where else is one to put them? In a bucket? under the bed? :))

Watching news and documentaries isn't pretentious. Reading Latin and philosophy books isn't pretentious. Having these booms in your bookcase isn't pretentious. Deliberately buying and staging these books just for show to try and impress people with your intelligence, is.

Blimey, my bookshelf is full, everything from Oscar Wilde to Ladybird books from my childhood! My bedside table is covered in books in various languages, because I speak them so read in them too. I think this is fairly normal?

User467 that's what I meant. None of those things in themselves are pretentious but if you make a show of them because you're trying to impress people then it is pretentious.

I've heard people in the past claim that they never watch any ordinary television and only every watch 'improving' things like the news and documentaries. I find making a point of telling people that rather pretentious.

BloodyDisgrace I feel mine are displayed though, not because I want to impress/intimidate my visitors but because I want to see them, I like having them around m. Occasionally I spotting a title in passing and thinking 'ooh time for a reread of that one' or smiling because it reminded me of something. They're part of the overall look and feel of the rooms where I have them just like the other things I have around me, pictures on the wall, knick knacks. If it were just a matter of storage then I have plenty of 'hidden' shelf space out in the garage or the spare bedroom or the big empty closet in the hall.

I keep books I use over and over again, like cookbooks in the kitchen because I use them frequently and the ones that are read but not used will be donated, I’ve even started to limit myself to library books to cut down on books living in my house. Dh on the other hand keeps all his books from Uni - books that are completely out of date and no use to anyone, but dh has difficulties letting go of things, drives me mad, my books from Uni are long gone. No point in keeping books that won’t be read again - let someone else enjoy them.

@RoseWhiteTips: I could never regard books as “clutter”.

Maybe you should have a chat to my allergist. He certainly does. Books, carpet and indoor plants were the first things I was told to remove.

"Educated people like books and wish to have them in their homes. A room looks dead without books"
Have you been elected as the new arbiter of some sort of vague, acceptable standards?

I’m a book lover, used to work in a bookshop and still enjoy organising my books into categories - classic fiction, contemporary fiction etc. I also think that books make a house look loved and more like a home. If I visit my friend her house is always incredibly tidy but there isn’t a single book anywhere. It’s clearly only my taste but it seemed incredibly sterile to me without them.

Oh, and by the way, I do have 3000 "books" in the house - the majority of which I have read. It's just that no one can actually see them, as they are on the MacBook.

Even then, I have to declutter books I know I am never going to ever look at again as I find them to be mental cutter.

@SassitudeandSparkl: Tonight my DH laughingly said he thought I sounded pretentious going on about university and keeping these books on display

Couldn't agree with you more. That was, I thought, the telling comment, not the books physically on the shelves. I was going to be pretentious myself and add a derogatory comment about Sophie Kinsella, but it would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

If anyone examined my bookshelves, they'd think I'm a master crafter, brilliant cook and baker, and from the amount of fantasy literature probably about 15 (those are mainly hubby's but I do read them sometimes too). Am I being pretentious, no, overly optimistic about my abilities, definitely, but I love looking at my books and planning all the things I'm going to make ONE day. Book shelves are a joy to have, whatever you put on them, because we all fill them with things we want to take down and enjoy at whatever moment we fancy.

How you can have married a man who doesn’t read when you love to is beyond me. You aren’t being remotely pretentious and he should be proud of having a wife who is clearly smarter than him!

Your husband should be proud of your achievements not trying to knock you down.
He sounds immature and jealous.
I think you need to have a very serious talk with him.

I can't even imagine what a home would be like without rows of various books in almost every room! The first thing I do when I visit a new house is linger around the bookshelf. YNBU.

I have loads of books and plenty I go back to regularly even if it's only every 10 or 20 years. it is how a lot of people are. Conversely if people don't like books and don't read that's fine too.We all differ.

Oops ! Sounds like a jealous put down to me !

Is he jealous?