Books to Ignore
Like timesink productivity websites, books written purely to instruct us what books to read are inherently counterproductive. The Second Pass does the opposite, producing a list of ten ‘classic’ books not to read.
- White Noise by Don DeLillo
- Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner
- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
- The Road by Cormac McCarthy
- The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence
- On the Road by Jack Kerouac
- The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
- The USA Trilogy by John Dos Passos
- Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf
- A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
I can hear the arguments brewing as I type, so head to The Second Pass to see the reasons why each was chosen.
via The Browser
3 Comments
I note that One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez is on both the ‘Books to Ignore’ and the “Books that will induce a mindf*ck” (via everything2.com) lists.
Maybe I should ignore it because it will f*ck with my mind?
Haha, very likely. It is, however, on my ‘to read’ list for ’09.
Will report back if I’m still compos mentis.
One Hundred Years of Solitude?
The only conceivable reason for this is that the English translation must horrible. Consider learning Spanish just to read this book.