Anthropology of the Big Bang

[Gamma]

I could be wrong, because at this point I've only watched about a quarter of this show's full run; but: something that strikes me is the relative lack of references to the guys *reading.* Off the top of my head, I can think of three instances: when they gave Leonard a book for his birthday in Peanut Reaction, when they discussed Asimov, and a mention of Sheldon's Kindle.

Academically-inclined people read, both fiction and nonfiction. They have to, and they want to. I'm sure all four guys learned to read at a precociously young age and they should have fond childhood memories of classic fantasy & scifi novels like Narnia or Alice in Wonderland and countless others.

IIRC they discussed LOTR in terms of the movies, not the books. Not that you can't have both, of course, but still. Did we see them discuss the differences between the movies and the books? I don't think so.

A&B do not come across as intellectual at all. Their conversations and interests revolve around the most excruciatingly trivial and banal things. Like the saying goes, great minds talk about ideas, mediocre minds talk about events, and poor minds talk about people. B. has no interior life whatsoever; I've never seen such a hollow and insubstantial character as a regular on a show, ever, and A's interests seem kind of pasted-on, like her other weird attributes. They don't seem to do anything just out of pure curiosity and enjoyment; they do things that benefit them in some concrete way.

But I would've expected more name-dropping of classic (or recent) scifi and fantasy *novels* and stories, if this show was actually geek-friendly, which it isn't, as Dev said.

Yeah there are not a lot of references to the guys reading but I did think of a couple more for Sheldon. In the Martha episode he talks about the book Flatland(was that also the episode he learned Finnish?). In another episode Sheldon counsels Leonard (when Leonard is thinking of cheating on Pryia) by saying he has read all the moral philosophers, including Dr.Seuss. He then refers to Nietzsche. Also in 43 Peculiarly Raj makes reference to The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy.