Pretentious and Fake?

antonioray
Tue, 13 Apr 2010 19:44:08 +0000

If the prompt is your favorite book, then I suppose it’s passable if you’re telling the truth. You don’t get extra points for picking books like Thus Spoke Zarathustra.



I was still in the cave, trying to make sense of shadows that I perceived as reality.



I mean I could see what you’re saying but there’s really no need to say that reality was incarnated in a bunch of shadows.

Also, your middle paragraph isn’t about the original book but about the books that you had read afterwards. Divine Comedy is nice, and so is Candide but I think mentioned them once in a sentence and never revisiting them again is doing yourself injustice.

I chose Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon as my book essay, and I stuck with it to the end for about 600 words. You should’ve done the same; some might accuse you of “intellectually masturbating,” which might not be too far from the truth.

The best college essay I had ever read is in the Barron’s book of college essays, which I picked up and skimmed one day in Barnes and Nobles.

The essay was for Princeton and was about the author’s love of exploring, and I’m pretty sure the biggest word he used in that essay was “wade.”