The editors of GQ magazine have sparked outrage after placing the Bible in their list of "21 Books You Don't Have to Read."
GQ magazine listed the Bible as No. 12 in the list because they claim it's a "foolish" piece of work that often contradicts itself.
"The Holy Bible is rated very highly by all the people who supposedly live by it but who in actuality have not read it," they said. "Those who have read it know there are some good parts, but overall it is certainly not the finest thing that man has ever produced. It is repetitive, self-contradictory, sententious, foolish, and even at times ill-intentioned."
The editors agreed that there are some good things about the Bible, such as "the nasty bits." But instead of turning to the Word of God, they recommended Agota Kristof's book, "The Notebook," which they described as "a marvelous tale of two brothers who have to get along when things get rough."
"The subtlety and cruelty of this story is like that famous sword stroke (from below the boat) that plunged upward through the bowels, the lungs, and the throat and into the brain of the rower — Jesse Ball, 'Census,'" they added.
Other books that made it to their list are "Lonesome Dove" by Larry McMurty, "Goodbye to All That" by Robert Graves, "The Old Man and the Sea" by Ernest Hemingway, "A Farewell to Arms" by Ernest Hemingway, and "The Lord of the Rings" by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Even classical novels such as "The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger and "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain did not escape their criticism.
"The worst crime committed by 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' is that it makes first-time Twain readers think Twain wrote tedious, meandering stories. He did, as is evidenced by this, his book of tedious, meandering stories — but he also wrote a lot of richly entertaining meandering stories that are not constrained by the ham-fisted narration of a fictional backcountry child or suffused with his sweaty imitation of a slave talking," they said about Twain's work.
So instead of "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," they recommended "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave," which is a first-hand account of the slavery endured by Fredrick Douglass.
