How many of today's cultivated readers have read the masterpieces of European literature? How many have thoroughly read Proust's "In Search of Lost Time" or completed Joyce's "Ulysses"? How many Italian, English, or ancient Greek literature professors have read from beginning to end the classic works they teach their students, such as Dante's "Inferno," Milton's "Paradise Lost," or Homer's "Iliad"? Very few, claims Pierre Bayard, even though they can speak admirably about them, formulating interesting opinions about their form and content.

The non-reading of the "classical" texts that we are supposed to have read encounters a series of internalized constraints - those who have not read them are automatically considered illiterate and disreputable - which, according to Bayard, lead to a collective pretense regarding the books we have read.

By analyzing with great persuasiveness the circumstances in which we are forced to speak about books we have not read, the French author, drawing from his personal experience, offers us a series of advice that allow us to effectively address this "communication" problem and to reflect with greater clarity and honesty about the activity of reading and its significance. Ultimately, the value lies not only in the book itself, but also in its cultural impact, the specific weight it carries within the context of its era's culture. We may not have read all the books we talk about, but we know that without them we would be poorer; therefore, even in this way, we grant them a prominent place in our lives.

The book is divided into the following sections:

A. Ways of non-reading
- Books we are not familiar with
- Books we have read selectively
- Books we have heard about
- Books we have forgotten
B. Circumstances of speech
- At social gatherings
- In front of a professor
- In front of the author
- With our beloved ones
C. Recommended behaviors
- Not feeling ashamed
- Imposing our ideas
- Inventing books
- Talking about ourselves