"The girl hesitated. "It has rather a sentimental name.  Did you ever read it? --'Tears, Idle Tears'" (217).
"You've read it, Nanny?" "Yes, said his daughter. "It ought to have been called 'Slop, Silly Slop'" (197).

Another way in which the Laphams are directly contrasted with the Coreys is in the books they like read or ignore.  Silas asks Tom (74) and Bromfield (143) if they read “The Events”, the newspaper that wrote about him, but of course neither of them do.  They read, “’The Daily Advertiser’, the only daily there is in the old-fashioned Boston sense”. (143).  So, we see that Lapham doesn’t read the right newspaper.  Irene also asks Tom for a list of books to buy for the new house.  Now, Tom is no literary genius, but he at least knows the classic authors.  Penelope is more knowledgeable, but Irene doesn’t read books other than novels and doesn’t recognize authors. Tom says, “I see you’re reading Middlemarch.  Do you like George Eliot? Who?” (88) Irene answers.  Tom laments their state of literacy to his father who inquires, “Had they the knowledge enough to be ashamed of their ignorance?” (117).  Tom evades the question.  He goes on to call the Laphams “quick, shrewd, and sensible” to which Bromfield compares them to the Sioux!  He says “all civilization comes through literature now” (118).  The theater, newspapers, and lectures of the Laphams are not enough.  Even when they do read books, they read trashy novels like Tears, Idle Tears that was denounced emphatically by Rev. Sewell on account of its being degrading, and called “Slop, silly slop” by Nanny Corey in the same vein of criticism (197).