Smart Books, Dumb Books
January 27, 2008
This list is scientifically meaningless, but generally interesting. I do know that I haven't met many imbeciles who have read Atlas Shrugged, Catch-22, or Lolita. Most of my favorites did not make the list, since I read almost exclusively non-fiction. (The only exception is fiction that raises existential questions, like The Road).
Freakonomics was breezy reading - not much more challenging than reading US Weekly. I suppose the answer is that only smart people would be predisposed to reading the book. It's not finishing the book that correlated with intelligence - it's wanting to read the book in the first place.
Also, C.S. Lewis's books "score" poorly, though his work is interesting, insightful, and much more challenging reading than Freakonomics. Then again, I think we're back to predisposition: Are smart people predisposed to read C.S. Lewis? For the most part (unfortunately), no.