Books not to read?!

So, Times Online recently published a list of ten books not to read before you die, followed by an additional list of five further wastes of time.

To sum up, the books were:

• Ulysses


• Lord of the Rings


• For Whom the Bell Tolls


• Remembrance of Things Past


• The Dice Man


• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas


• The Beauty Myth


• War and Peace


• The Iliad


• Pride and Prejudice


• Atlas Shrugged


• The Leopard


• The Castle


• Catch-22


• The Catcher in the Rye

I can't speak to all of these, but come on! First of all, back the fuck up off of Tolkien, or I'll have to take my nice-nerd gloves off!

And The Iliad is a very good book, though I suggest anyone who doesn't think so read the Fagles translation, which does a good job of transporting the emotion and dramatic tension across 27 centuries, where other versions can be dry as dust. Similarly, Dante's Inferno is incredibly good when translated by Ciardi, or when read by John Cleese. (The Purgatorio and The Paradiso still suck donkey balls, though.)

Catch-22 was almost, but not quite, Douglas Adams good. Of course, it was a surreally tragic comedy, so it wasn't quite going for Douglas Adams funny.

The Catcher in the Rye did kind of suck (though it's been about 10 years since I've read it--perhaps it's time for a revisit). Franny and Zooey was much better.

But most of these books deserve to be read, if only for historical context. I grant that some of these might be a bit tough to read at the beach or in bed, but this guy needs to get some audiobooks. I mean, if you can read Ulysses in a week or two of driving to back and forth to work, isn't it worth it, just to know what the culture is talking about?

(It's possible that I may have just been Ebert satired, but if so, I think it fails as satire for the same reason: If this list isn't this author's actual beliefs, there's certainly somebody crazy enough to have them.)