In a couple of recent essays, not reading absorbs a literature professor and a men’s magazine writer.

The academic ponders discussing books he hasn’t read to make a point about the canon: there shouldn’t be one. He suggests that trying to meet the standards of high culture makes us inauthentic.

The hack wonders if not reading Harry Potter means he’ll find himself living in a world he doesn’t understand when the Potter-obsessed masses grow up. He suggests that not participating in pop culture makes us irrelevant.

I cringed while reading both writers (the professor only second hand, since I don’t know French). There’s just too much swagger: I don’t need to read what’s important in my social setting because I’m already so erudite/hip.

How they say it irks me, but what they say interests me: What we value individually is more worthwhile than what everyone else thinks we should value.

I’d be more interested if they’d tell me what they are reading, instead of what they’re not.