Have you ever found yourself at a social gathering and suddenly you're in the midst of a conversation about, let's say, Homer? Maybe it's Lolita, or War and Peace, or...well, you can fill in the blank on your own. There are books that we feel we should have read; there are books that we feel an obligation for having some knowledge of; and, then, there are the books that we enjoy so very much, which may not necessarily be worthy of deep discussion and consideration beyond the pages we so quickly devoured... especially when you're trying to impress someone with your sparkling wit and your obvious intellectual superiority.
Fear not, authors are picking up on our insecurities. Pierre Bayard, a Paris University literature professor, has written a survivor’s guide for literature students, “How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read?” Check out the New York Times article, Read It? No, but You Can Skim a Few Pages and Fake It ; and, if you'd like some more tips, The Boston Globe columnist, Alex Beam, wrote a piece in October, 2006 called The Delicate Art of How Not to Read a Book.
You may want to read the latter article first - it's shorter.