"We've been told all our lives that we can only call ourselves well-read once we've read the Great Books. We tried," the editors wrote. But a few pages into Bleak House, we realized that not all the Great Books have aged well. Some are racist and some are sexist, but most are just really, really boring.” 
 
 Perhaps predictably, the provocative proclamation about the Bible brought instant ire from Christians. Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2FcPKxa I really don't think I'll be buying anymore GQ Mags. GQ magazine, a bible of “grooming” tips, gadget suggestions and style advice, has sparked a social media conflagration by calling the Christian Holy Bible “foolish, repetitive and contradictory” and placing it on a list of “21 Books You Don’t Have to Read.” 
 
 “The Holy Bible is rated very highly by all the people who supposedly live by it but who in actuality have not read it,” novelist Jesse Ball writes in the magazine. “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.” 
 
 Instead, Ball recommends reading Agota Kristof's The Notebook calling it “a marvelous tale of two brothers who have to get along when things get rough.” 
 
 Also on the GQ list are such classics as The Catcher in the Rye, Lonesome Dove, The Old Man and the Sea, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Lord of the Rings. @fatherjonathan: It’s ‘foolish’ that the editors of GQ Magazine would claim that the bible is one of the most overrated books of all time pic.twitter.com/rY7vhbTWkx — FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) April 22, 2018 
 
 And evangelist Franklin Graham, in a post on Facebook, said that the Bible is “sharper than a double-edged sword. But the way Cherry-Garrard writes, without grandiose flourishes but with a stoic and dogged commitment to describe and explain his experiences, is gripping from its very first line: “Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised.” —Chris Heath, GQ correspondent 
 
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– If you've ever found yourself struggling through a so-called "classic" book only to find yourself thinking, "How racist/sexist/boring," you're not alone. The editors of GQ, along with some current authors, have put together a list of 21 such books (technically 20, because one of them got two votes) that are simply outdated and should be struck from the "Great Books" canon. The list got itself mentioned on Fox & Friends last weekend, and not in a good way—it includes the Bible, which Jesse Ball calls "repetitive, self-contradictory, sententious, foolish, and even at times ill-intentioned," leading Fox News religion contributor Father Jonathan Morris to push back by calling its inclusion on the list "foolish," USA Today reports. Lots of social media users also decried the choice, and evangelist Franklin Graham said the editors "couldn't be more wrong." As for what else made the list, here's a sampling—along with the books the editors and the authors they spoke to think you should read instead: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain: This is the book that got two votes. "Mark Twain was a racist. ... He was a man of his time, so let's leave him there," writes Tommy Orange. Instead, he suggests reading The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll by Alvaro Mutis; Caity Weaver suggests Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.