I know you have your giftcards handy, and you’re looking for something new to read. In these times, I often think about books everyone’s supposed to read. I’ve read some of them. Many are damn good and on the list for a reason, but some need to be avoided like carbs or fat or sugar. So, in the tradition of Eat This, Not That!, here are a few of my recommendations:

Instead of the whiney tedium of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig (William Morrow, 1974), read Andy Merriman’s The Wisdom of Donkeys (Walker & Co., 2008). I reviewed the latter a while back, writing,

Andy Merriman explores his humanity through the calm eyes of the donkey. A former academic, Merriman escaped that bookish bedlam to the south of France to roam the hills with a donkey named Gribouille. He visits the outdoor clinic of the Society for the Protection and Welfare of Donkeys and Mules in Egypt and finds it more inspiring than the Pyramids. The economy there is driven by donkeys, not camels as is widely assumed. Donkeys plow the fields, carry the equipment and supplies, and since they are being bred less and less, the few extant donkeys are more precious to the economy and subsequently evermore overworked… The workers there don’t seem to think that donkeys feel pain. They treat them as machines.

Though it contains some similar lessons, the book is just so much better in every way. Instead of a longwinded, pretentious narrator, a whiney kid, and a fixer-upper motorcycle, you get a thoughtful storyteller, no children, and a donkey!

Instead of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers (Vintage, 2001), read Digging Up Mother: A Love Story by Doug Stanhope (Da Capo, 2016), which I reviewed for Splitsider. I won’t ruin it for you. Mother doesn’t die at the end. She dies at the beginning. Do know this: Mother’s death was an inside job.

Both of these books are about the narrator’s mom dying, but one of them is as real as it is funny. The other one is depressing and not even a true story. One of them has a foreword by Johnny Depp. The other does not.

If depraved comedy is not your thing, do not retreat to Eggersland. Go get Rebecca Solnit’s The Faraway Nearby (Viking, 2013). As I wrote previously, there are several intertwining allegories threading through The Faraway Nearby. One is about a windfall of apricots rotting slowly on the floor of Solnit’s bedroom, and that story is connected to the very dire story of the diminishing mind of her mom. Overall though, the book is about moving, about going, coming, and becoming, the crisis of living where cartographers have yet to tread, losing your way and finding it again.

Kim Gordon’s Girl in a Band (Dey St., 2015) is another solid option. She has helped define the art of her time, but she hasn’t been limited by it. Her art, performance, and writing all feel completely fearless.

Instead of the fumbling, faux intelligence of A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (Grove Weidenfeld, 1987), read The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner (Scribner, 2013), or grab this year’s best book, The Girls by Emma Cline (Random House). Both are better in every way. Instead of suffocating under the overbearing sloth of Dunces, you can grow with the lovely language of either of the others. Also, there are motorcycles and art in one (The Flamethrowers) and hippy communes, rockstars, and murders in the other (The Girls). You can thank me later.

Instead of the woefully contrived Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (Crown, 2011), read any one of the following:

• Daemon by Daniel Suarez (Signet, 2009)
• Synners by Pat Cadigan (Spectra, 1991)
• Vurt by Jeff Noon (St. Martin’s, 1993)
• Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon (Penguin, 2013)
• Year Zero by Rob Reid (Del Rey/Ballantine, 2013)
• The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes (Mulholland Books, 2013)
• Dare Me by Megan Abbott (Reagan Arthur, 2012)
• The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus (Vintage, 2012)
• Neuropath by R. Scott Bakker (Tor, 2010)
• Perdido Street Station by China Meiville (Del Rey, 2001)
• After the Saucers Landed by Douglas Lain (Night Shade, 2015)
• or Neuromancer by William Gibson (Ace, 1984), for fuck’s sake.

We’re all going to die. There is only a certain amount of time to read, which means only a certain number of books are going to get read. Your brain is not a computer, but the old phrase “garbage in, garbage out” still applies. There are no deadlines, but there’s no time to waste. Choose well, choose wisely, and don’t read or finish crap writing of any kind.