{"id":19773,"date":"2018-04-24T08:31:11","date_gmt":"2018-04-24T13:31:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=19773"},"modified":"2018-04-24T05:42:25","modified_gmt":"2018-04-24T10:42:25","slug":"read-this-not-that-since-modern-readers-have-to-choose-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2018\/04\/24\/read-this-not-that-since-modern-readers-have-to-choose-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Read This, Not That, Since Modern Readers Have To Choose One"},"content":{"rendered":"

For some reason, Friar delved<\/a> into a list of books provided by GQ<\/em> entitled 21 Books You Don\u2019t Have to Read<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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\u2014and a group of un-boring writers\u2014give you permission to strike these books from the canon. Here’s what you should read instead.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sounds like the ill-read leading the unread to me, but it does present itself as a book quiz! Here’s the list. I’ve bolded the titles I’ve read:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Old Canon:<\/td>\nNew, Improved GQ<\/em> Canon:<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Lonesome Dove<\/em>
\nby Larry McMurty<\/td>\n		The Mountain Lion<\/em>
\nby Jean Stafford<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
The Catcher in the Rye<\/b><\/em>
\nby J.D. Salinger<\/td>\n		Olivia: A Novel<\/em>
\nby Dorothy Strachey<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Goodbye to All That
\n<\/em> by Robert Graves\n<\/td>\n		Dispatches
\n<\/em> by Michael Herr\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
The Old Man and the Sea<\/b>
\n<\/em> by Ernest Hemingway\n<\/td>\n		The Summer Book
\n<\/em> by Tove Jannson\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
The Alchemist
\n<\/em> by Paulo Coelho\n<\/td>\n		Near to the Wild Heart
\n<\/em> by Clarice Lispector\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
A Farewell to Arms<\/b>
\n<\/em> by Ernest Hemingway\n<\/td>\n		The Great Fire
\n<\/em> by Shirley Hazzard\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Blood Meridian
\n<\/em> by Cormac McCarthy\n<\/td>\n		The Sisters Brothers
\n<\/em> by Patrick deWitt\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
John Adams
\n<\/em> by David McCullough\n<\/td>\n		Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President
\n<\/em> by Clarice Millard\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn<\/b>
\n<\/em> by Mark Twain\n<\/td>\n		Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave<\/b>
\n<\/em> by Frederick Douglass\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
 
\n<\/em>\n<\/td>\n		The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll
\n<\/em> by Alvaro Mutis\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
The Ambassadors
\n<\/em> by Henry James\n<\/td>\n		The Rise and the Fall of the Third Reich
\n<\/em> by William L. Shirer\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
The Bible<\/b>
\n<\/em>\n<\/td>\n		The Notebook
\n<\/em> by Agota Kristof\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Franny and Zooey<\/b>
\n<\/em> by J.D. Salinger\n<\/td>\n		Death Comes for the Archbishop
\n<\/em> by Willa Cather\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
The Lord of the Rings<\/b><\/a>
\n<\/em> by J.R.R. Tolkein\n<\/td>\n		The Earthsea series
\n<\/em> by Ursula Le Guin\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Dracula
\n<\/em> by Bram Stoker\n<\/td>\n		Angels
\n<\/em> by Denis Johnson\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Catch-22<\/b>
\n<\/em> by Joseph Heller\n<\/td>\n		The American Granddaughter
\n<\/em> by Inaam Kachachi\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Life
\n<\/em> by Keith Richards\n<\/td>\n		The Worst Journey in the World
\n<\/em> by Apsley Cherry-Garrard\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Freedom
\n<\/em> by Jonathan Franzen\n<\/td>\n		Too Loud a Solitude
\n<\/em> by Bohumil Hrabal\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Gravity’s Rainbow
\n<\/em> by Thomas Pynchon\n<\/td>\n		Inherent Vice
\n<\/em> by Thomas Pynchon\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Slaughterhouse Five<\/a><\/b>
\n<\/em> by Kurt Vonnegut\n<\/td>\n		Veronica
\n<\/em> by Mary Gaitskill\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Gulliver’s Travels<\/b><\/a>
\n<\/em> by Jonathan Swift\n<\/td>\n		The Life and Opinions of Tristan Shandy, Gentleman
\n<\/em> by Laurence Stern\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

Of the entire list, the books that I have not yet read but might someday includes Dracula<\/em> and maybe some Pynchon (although I think the title I have on my to-read shelves is The Crying of Lot 49<\/em>). The rest of it? Meh, the kind of thing you already find on college syllabi these days. <\/p>\n

But to call them canon–even some of those on the left side of the list–presupposes that anyone will give a flying fish about them in a couple of decades. Which I doubt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For some reason, Friar delved into a list of books provided by GQ entitled 21 Books You Don\u2019t Have to Read: 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19773"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19778,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19773\/revisions\/19778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}