I think this and the rest of our disagreements is how we view the original comment, and the kind of motivations we ascribe to the original comment.

I'm biased, perhaps unfairly, in that the people I've met who talk about books this way do so with the goal of being able to say that they've read X, that they can show themselves as the kind of person who has reads books like X.

Again perhaps unfair to the original comment given that I don't know where they're coming from.

Because we are the rest we are mostly in agreement about. I am the last person to argue that one should give up when and things get difficult.

But not all roads to the acquisition of knowledge lead to this book, or any one specific book.