Not a fantasy because there’s no magic? That’s a pretty limited view of fantasy. You think people like Nanny Flagg and Abiatha Swelter and Flay could actually exist? A place like Gormenghast castle?
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So a bunch of those books that should be avoided really are great – I love Gravity’s Rainbow - but the substitutions are really good too. And now I have a list of new books that I haven’t read yet for the summer!
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They didn’t shit on Dickens, either. Should we send them a medal?
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Ahhh… A reading list for short-attention-span-theater
Wonderful
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In an ordinary, rational world where things make logical sense, I’d agree.
As it stands, we live in the reality where hard-hitting, balanced journalism now comes from sources like Teen Vogue (another publication owned by the same company as GQ.)
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If you don’t like Catcher in the Rye, you might enjoy Dr. Frank’s King Dork.
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It doesn’t seem to be particularly impossible, no. Obviously it and its characters don’t exist, but that’s what makes it fiction. Some of the characters like Flay are a little over-the-top, but no more so than the broad caricatures found in Dickens.
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The Lord of the Rings and the Earthsea Trilogy have opposite problems - in that LotR starts (mostly) dry and boring while Earthsea starts with an amazing introduction to the world, and while LotR builds to a very satisfying conclusion Earthsea doesn’t. I didn’t read any of the books past the first three though, and I still really like the series.
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Funnily enough, I first tried to read LOTR when I was 12.
I hated it it. I didn’t even make it out of the shire, fed up with endless pages-long description of the bloody trees.
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Major Major said the same thing!
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Ehh, I’ve tried to read The Classics and The Canon, and I gave up because they were usually fucking unreadable crap.
There won’t be a roadblock at the afterlife pulling you over if you didn’t read The Books Everyone Says You Should Read. So read what’s fun.
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i disagree with much of it, mostly because of its exclusionist bent, i will say that any list that pans “catcher in the rye” can’t be all bad.
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While I’m very sympathetic to the idea that Jesus is still helping Marx finish Das Kapital, I disagree with your reading recommendations for the Bible. As I’m sure you know, the 72 books of the Bible (66 for you heretics out there) were written separately over a span of hundreds of years and across different cultures… and the books aren’t even arranged chronologically! They all have different theologies, audiences, cultural/historical contexts, and are different literary genres.
So, uh, I probably wouldn’t read the book from cover to cover if I just wanted to know what was going on. That sounds mad boring. And confusing.
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I have not read Catcher in the Rye. I have read Olivia
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YES!
I was required by my parents’ religion to read the whole thing and PASS AN ORAL QUIZ to be considered a member of the church. Do I BELIEVE in the Bible? (snickering) Nope. Would I recommend that other 13-year-olds spend their summer reading it? YES! After that, nothing else scares you - especially the English language as the works of Shakespeare and other ‘antique’ literature was written.
Do I believe that a huge swath of world literature and legal codes have built on its foundations as either a rebuttal or an agreement? YES! I find it odd when people wander around either arguing with the Bible or thumping it, but have no idea what’s actually in it.
Reading it in order, while keeping in mind a timeline of the various historical eras in which each book was written gives you a picture of how it has evolved, and how other religions have used it as a springboard for their own theology.
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Why is GQ posting troll articles?
This article seems carefully calculated to infuriate everybody. Sure including the Bible is cheap, but also Vonnegut’s masterpiece Slaughterhouse Five, Tolkien’s piece de resistance The Lord of the Rings, Mark Twain’s most famous work, etc…
Some of their recommendations are quite dubious as well, so even if you did agree on the original work they’re offering up something worse to replace it, which should infuriate even more people.
I mean goddamn they want you to read some novel about feeling feelings instead of Slaughterhouse Five?
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Yoiks.
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Yes, I am going to follow the recommendations of a jackass who is purposefully stupid about “Catch-22” and “LOTR”.
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Speaking as someone who once had a subscription to GQ*, the whole point of the magazine is to instruct new professionals how to hide their blue-collar backgrounds. All of their issues have articles instructing real world trolls how to start arguments during the cocktail hour, “I think LOTR is inferior to Earthsea. Are you ready to rummmmbbble?!”
- I had subscribed to some other magazine that folded. The publisher assumed I was a dude, and substituted GQ. I’ll read anything…
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It’s strange. As a guy I assumed I was supposed to be GQ’s target audience, but I’ve never so much as taken a second glance at their cover. There is little that interests me less than fashion advice. I’ve never heard anybody talk about it. Nobody I know has ever said “i read this article in GQ and…”.
Who is the target audience for GQ? Trendy urban 20 somthings?
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