The Bible’s been around for centuries but GQ magazine is like, eh? What’s so great about it? Instead of Scripture, it has a fiction recommendation for you.

The Good Book makes the mag’s list of “21 Books You Don’t Have to Read.”  While allowing “there are some good parts,” the post warns that it’s “repetitive, self-contradictory, sententious, foolish, and even at times ill-intentioned.” ( This is me: Click above link to see the 21 books. Lonesome Dove?  Really. One of the greatest westerns ever. Also on list is The Old Man and the Sea, and A Farewell to Arms. GQ goes on to suggest alternatives). 

Instead, GQ suggests that instead of THE BIBLE,  how about “The Notebook? by Agote Kristof, not the Nicholas Sparks book of the same name. Kritsof’s book is billed as “a marvelous tale of two brothers who have to get along when things get rough.” Ok, i have not read it and it is likely great but i am not convinced yet.

The Bible finds itself in the company of works by J.D. Salinger, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway on the list of books GQ is just not that into. “Catcher in the Rye” is dinged as being “without any literary merit whatsoever.” “Huckleberry Finn” is tedious, meandering and hamfisted. Hemingway’s sentences? Too short.

Even Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” makes the roster of books to skip. (Click on it and link will appear. (ME: Here’s the entire list again if you missed the link above. Click on this link:, which includes contributions by various writers.

Me: I just read the whole list plus GQ’s list of what you should read instead. Hmm. i don’t agree.