I somehow stumbled upon a list of 21 books you don't have to read from GQ. A lad-mag discouraging people from reading is hardly surprising, but I had a nerd rant about it elsewhere on S&M and thought I should share.
You probably need to check out the list for context. My numbers correspond mostly. Mostly...
Let's take the list blow by blow!
Haven't read either, probably won't either.
The Catcher in the Rye? I think I've read it. Oh wait, it was a prescribed work. I haven't read any prescribed work ever. I would take a tale of teenage angst and alienation over a preppie boarding school story any time, though.
Haven't read either, I've read the White Goddess by Robert Graves. Not a bad writer. Don't think 'it's not racist' is a good enough reason to read a book over another book in which 'the author is racist' is about the only criticism. Ghandi was racist. He liberated India. Stalin was foaming at the mouth about not being racist. He committed genocide on the Kulags and starved millions of Russians because the Kulags were the productive members of society producing their food. I'd take my chances with the racist Ghandi over the not-racist Stalin.
What can you possibly recommend over Ernest Hemingway? Something heart-warming? Perhaps you aren't aiming at the same target market here.
I agree, as you can recommend just about anything over Paulo Coelho to me. Dudes wandering into the desert to find themselves lead me more towards the Carlos Castaneda side of things, but fair enough. Coelho's writing is terrible. He's like the Brazilian version of Chinua Achebe. Maybe these stories sounded better in their heads in their own language, but maybe they should have stayed there too.
Ernest Hemingway again? A book published in 2003 can by default not be more contemporaneous than a book written by someone who lived through the war and wrote about it, except maybe to someone who did not live through the war and could not possibly have any conception of what it means to be contemporaneous to an era which is a mere anachronism to them. Perhaps someone who isn't contemporaneous to WWII would associate with the idea of making a Lord of the Flies remake with a non-binary gender fluid cast, but someone who is interested in finding out about a time when dying for your country was the privilege of men barely old enough to shave and who thought black stars on a sepia image of a bosom was obscene enough to burn in hell for for all eternity (and worth it) and cigarettes were good for asthma might ask someone more contemporaneous to the times to tell them about what it means to be contemporaneous to those times. Just a hunch.
Haven't read them. Probably won't read them since both of these are by default recommended by GQ, a lad mag trying to appear more high-brow now for some as yet undefined reason. Who do they think they are, Playboy?
Haven't read either. Not sure how a book about history by one of Murica's foremost historians needs a replacement.
Mark Twain is one of the best writers of all time. There can be no recommendation worthy of consideration above him. Least of all missing the point of his social commentary so much that you want to replace it with a 'let's feel sorry for people who obviously went through a lot of bad things' story from hundreds of years ago.
Still Mark Twain. The GQ article lists 9 and 10 together. H P Lovecraft was a racist man of his time, as was Charles Dickens, but that doesn't negate the value of their literary works. Mark Twain on the other hand, was most likely not a racist. And if he was, should we stop reading his extremely acerbic social commentary, which criticises the racism of his time by any account, n-word and all? Or is it better to maybe teach people about context and how it matters and how trying to figure out where people are coming from is better than outright knee-jerking their entire life's work out of existence in favour of something more palatable to contemporaneous tastes?
Awkward, I've read the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, but not the other one. Not sure why one would recommend a Nazi history book over a novel. Maybe because Nazi dress sense is more fashionable, contemporaneously and all.
Why would you not read the Bible? Well, I can think of many reasons why not, but I can think of more reasons why random pop culture fiction is not as worthy of being read as the cornerstone of a couple of billion people's lives. Saying this as a godless heathen who wishes more religious people would read the Bible because it causes atheism at worst and agnosticism at slightly better in most thinking people who actually bother reading it.
Haven't read either. One Salinger book is probably more than you need, especially if you want to shoot someone. Or if someone else wants you to think that you want to shoot someone.
I agree with this one.The Lord of the Rings is a ponderous tome. You'll get more out of watching Wagner's Ring Cycle operas. At least it would keep you awake.
"Gothic-horror classics like Dracula and Frankenstein always leave me cold". That's the point. They were designed to do that. Congratulations! Now that they've included the spoiler for a story that probably would not have left anyone cold except the spoiler alert person that spoiler alert creepy Greyhound bus creep eventually spoiler alert killed, I would rather opt for a Gothic-horror classic like Dracula or Frankenstein. Especially since the books are so different from most of the Hollywood portrayals of the same characters.
Let's replace Catch-22, so catchy it gave us the catchphrase, and one of the classics of a really necessary war, with another let's feel sorry for people who are victims of another typical war that amounts to squabbling over resources story. Or let's not.
Keith Richards is a fascinating character. I want to read about his life, especially because he's widely read and will probably outlive us all. Do you want to read about one of the ultimate rock 'n roll stars, or do you want to read about some explorer who spoiler alert by the way lost the race to the North pole to someone from a country closer to the North pole? Well gollymymollygollygosh I hope it's not a racist Norwegian because then I would rather read about the South African vegan explorer who was definitely not racist but who died on Everest trying to prove to the world that vegans can do anything that not so fussy eaters can do.
Haven't read either but at this stage I'm willing to bet good money that both of these books are intolerably boring. Someone else's money, but still good money.
Note that one book from the same author is recommended over another, because that book is more contemporaneous to the author. I hear crickets. Ancient crickets.
Kurt Vonnegut. Slaughterhouse-Five is not about women breaking through the glass ceiling. Vonnegut is a brilliant writer and a master of his craft. In addition, he is also a superb teacher of writing. I don't really see how a story in which fewer women die and those who do die later on would be better, purely because of these facts. As with Mark Twain, I don't think the GQ authors bothered even with the Sparknotes to try and wrap their heads around this author. His books are mostly not about killing off a sex, and books in which the deaths are more equitable are not better by default.
Jonathan Swift wrote satire so subtle he wasn't even burnt at the stake for it in a time when you could be burnt at the stake for having a suspicious mole. I don't see how making the mistake of postmodernism 200 years before postmodernism came around is a good thing in any way, except in the sense of dying from a morphine overdose before the untreatable cancer kills you is considered a good thing.