10 Books to Pass Up With Confidence

Richard Wilson saves us all a bunch of time and effort with a not-reading list
By Harry Kimball,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 20, 2008 5:27 PM CDT
10 Books to Pass Up With Confidence
Hunter S. Thompson.   (Getty Images)

Forget the coma-inducing titles that lit lovers keep telling you to read, Richard Wilson writes in his book, Can’t Be Arsed: 101 Things Not to Do Before You Die. He lists the top 10 clunkers in the Daily Telegraph:

  • Ulysses, James Joyce: notoriously hard, so why bother?
  • Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien: the first dangerous step towards reading Dune.

  • Remembrance of Things Past, Marcel Proust: "If I want to remember my childhood I look at some photographs," writes Wilson.
  • Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson: "dreary ramblings of an unreliable and workshy tosspot."
  • War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy: "way, way too long."
  • The Iliad, Homer: not only boring, it's not even a book—it's a poem!
For Wilson's most avoidable book ever, click on the link below.
(More Richard Wilson stories.)

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