21 Books You Don’t Have to Read

And 21 you should read instead

From GQ: "We've been told all our lives that we can only call ourselves well-read once we've read the Great Books. We tried. We got halfway through Infinite Jest and halfway through the SparkNotes on Finnegans Wake. But a few pages into Bleak House, we realized that not all the Great Books have aged well. Some are racist and some are sexist, but most are just really, really boring. So we—and a group of un-boring writers—give you permission to strike these books from the canon. Here's what you should read instead."
Thumb avatarmonote Curated by Team Monote | Based on GQ - 21 Books You Don’t Have to Read





DON'T READ
Instead: The Mountain Lion by Jean Stafford

READ
Instead of Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

DON'T READ
Instead: Olivia: A Novel by Dorothy Strachey

READ
Instead of The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

DON'T READ
Instead: Dispatches by Michael Herr

READ
Instead of Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves

DON'T READ
Instead: The Summer Book by Tove Jansson

READ
Instead of The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

DON'T READ
Instead: Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector

READ
Instead of The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

DON'T READ
Instead: The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard

READ
Instead of A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

DON'T READ
Instead: The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt

READ
Instead of Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

DON'T READ
Instead: Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard

READ
Instead of John Adams by David McCullough

DON'T READ
Instead Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Fredrick Douglass & The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll by Alvaro Mutis

READ
Instead of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

READ
Instead of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

DON'T READ
Instead: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer

READ
Instead of The Ambassadors by Henry James

DON'T READ
Instead: The Notebook by Agota Kristof

DON'T READ
Instead: Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

READ
Instead of Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger

DON'T READ
Instead: Earthsea Series by Ursula K. Le Guin

READ
Instead of The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien

DON'T READ
Instead: Angels by Denis Johnson

READ
Instead of Dracula by Bram Stoker

DON'T READ
Instead: The American Granddaughter by Inaam Kachachi

READ
Instead of Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

DON'T READ
Instead: The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard

READ
Instead of Life by Keith Richards

DON'T READ
Instead: Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal

READ
Instead of Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

DON'T READ
Instead: Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon

READ
Instead of Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

DON'T READ
Instead: Veronica by Mary Gaitskill

READ
Instead of Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

READ
Instead of Gulliver's Travels

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