Atlas Shrugged

[Mike the Lab Rat]

It took me almost a month, but I finally finished that bugger.

It was a struggle to get past the first couple of hundred pages (partly because I had to get used to her style), but I'm glad I forced myself through them.

I liked it (color Martyred surprised...). Far better than "Anthem" or "The Fountainhead."

Yeah, the characterization was cartoonish (all the "good guys" were handsome/beautiful, while all the "bad guys" were physically unappealing), but overall it was pretty entertaining. The sex scenes were creepy.

Even the 50+ page speech by John Galt wasn't that bad if taken in small chunks. I especially like the section on the manipulative nature of the religious doctrine of "Original Sin." Yet another man-made accretion grafted onto Christ's mission in order to keep the sheeple in line.

It was weird/funny that some of the arguments made by the villains in the book (regarding sucking "the rich" and others dry in the name of the "common good," collectivism, etc. )are being used by some of the leftists on the board and by some of the presidential candidates now. What was intellectually and morally bankrupt from Rand's villains in 1957 is just as bad fifty-one years later.

I was glad I read it, but I'm pretty sure I'll never want to slog my way through it again.

There are rumors of a film adaptation, starring Angelina Jolie as Dagny Taggart, but I have no frigging idea how they'll pull it off.

[Mike the Lab Rat]

Tedious, narcissistic drivel. Reading Ayn Rand is the literary equivalent of lapping up a cumshot off the bathroom floor.

I'll have to take your word on that one.

[PSUFAN]

Never even reached for one of her books. Sometimes an artist's fanbase has a way of making decisions like that easy - see RaiderFan, Morrissey, etc.

[BSmack]

Tedious, narcissistic drivel. Reading Ayn Rand is the literary equivalent of lapping up a cumshot off the bathroom floor.

I'll have to take your word on that one.

Especially since Larry Linville has passed on to that great Vital Spot mens room in the sky.

Aw hell, even Frank Burns himself probably managed to avoid sucking any bodily fluids off the floor. But how many times can one even work in a good "Larry Linville passed out of the floor" reference?

[King Crimson]

the movie version of the Fountainhead is pretty hilarious.

[battery chucka' one]

Being a huge fan of Anthem, I gave this one a rip, several years back. I figured the premise was sound and that it would be quite rewarding. How wrong I was. I think I made it about 400 pages in. Stopped after the guy set his oil fields on fire. I think what bogged me down was the romance of the two capitalists. It just had a somewhat dirty feel to it. Dunno. Congrats for getting through the whole thing. I never did figure out who John Galt was. Glad you did. Peace.

[Mike the Lab Rat]

Being a huge fan of Anthem, I gave this one a rip, several years back. I figured the premise was sound and that it would be quite rewarding. How wrong I was. I think I made it about 400 pages in. Stopped after the guy set his oil fields on fire. I think what bogged me down was the romance of the two capitalists. It just had a somewhat dirty feel to it. Dunno. Congrats for getting through the whole thing. I never did figure out who John Galt was. Glad you did. Peace.

I was determined - I'm one of those people who will finish a book no matter how much I hate it, just as a point of determination and will. I agree that slogging through the beginning takes work. I also agree that the sex scenes are weird (Rand had obvious personal issues). I found it worthwhile, though. Galt's speech wasn't that bad, if taken in several small doses. If you ever have the time, I'd recommend giving it another shot. Like I said before, I actually found myself liking it much better than "The Fountainhead."

BTW, I hated "Anthem." Too freaking obnoxiously obvious with Rand's message.

[Dr_Phibes]

Robert Heinlein wasn't bad, but somewhere along the line he read Rand and thought she was worth emulating. He then proceeded to suck.

[Mike the Lab Rat]

Surprisingly, I've never read Heinlein. I made the mistake of reading Asimov in high school and found it so boring that it turned me off to most "serious" science fiction.

Fortunately, I had read the "Dune" trilogy and "Ringworld" prior to my being scarred forever by the boring, pretentious crap of Asimov.

[PSUFAN]

I have enjoyed Heinlein's "classics" - Stranger in a strange land, Red Planet, Starship Troopers. I heartily recommend those and other early works.

[Dr_Phibes]

Mike, his early stuff is really good - 'Door into Summer', etc. He started out writing to a younger audience, so his stuff was unpretentious, well thought out.

Anyway - a mid life crisis combined with a major heart attack caused him to melt/shit the bed. He decided to write for adults, so everything became just characters raving Ayn Rand style political-spaceship monologues. Pure crap.

What's really weird is that 'Stranger In A Strange Land' was adopted by the Charles Manson Family as some form of holy text. I actually picked up an early seventies copy to figure out how that worked, but never got round to reading it.
The cover art is really groovy, man. As soon as I find my blacklight and figure out who nicked my stash, I'll throw on In a gadda da vida and tackle it.

[MgoBlue-LightSpecial]

I read The Fountainhead when I was 17 and was impressed by its message...of course, I was 17. Didn't really care though for Rand's bloated style, and haven't since picked up another of her books.

[Diogenes]

I have enjoyed Heinlein's "classics" - Stranger in a strange land, Red Planet, Starship Troopers. I heartily recommend those and other early works.

All of the above are great. The moon is a harsh mistress is one of my personal favorites.

TANSTAAFL!

[Diogenes]

Another one I forgot is The Puppet Masters. The movie based on it is on Sci-Fi 9PM tonight.

Glory Road was pretty cool to.

[Diogenes]

Another author with an Ayn Rand feel to him is Terry Goodkind. He just put out the 11th and final volume of his Sword of Truth series a few months back (I managed to get a signed first edition)...



Kind of a cross between Rand and LOTR.There's also a short novella in the series called Debt of Bones. The first editions on the hardback of this have an error on the title page where the author is listed as Robert Jordon. :twisted:

If you dig Rand and Heinlein, you'll probably enjoy these books. The first is Wizard's First Rule, check it out.


As far as Starship Troopers, it changed my way at looking at voting. If taxation without representation is tyranny, then representation without taxation (or something else to earn the right) is anarchy.

[Rasputin]

I read and liked the first several books in the series. Then I kind of started to get tired of being beaten over the head with his philosophy. He's pretty ham-handed with it.

That, and he had an interview where he basically called fantasy readers idiots.

If anyone's interested, the television series based on the books starts this weekend.

http://www.legendoftheseeker.com/

I don't know how well it will translate to the screen, but with Sam Raimi producing it it might be okay.

[Lillian Vernon]

Listen to this man. He is an expert at sucking donkey dick and lapping up cumshots off bathrom floors.