I'll Read Anything...almost.

[MineralMan]

I've been a voracious reader since the age of 5. I read everything. I even read ingredients lists on the side of food packages and academic literary criticism. In my entire life, I can think of only two novels I have not been able to read to the end. The first was Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged; the second was Fifty Shades of Gray.

Unreadable, both of them.

[MineralMan]

1. Addendum: Some books I have not even started to read.

I haven't listed those, but they include anything written by L. Ron Hubbard and the Left Behind series. Those I knew I wouldn't finish, so I didn't start.

[moriah]

4. When my mother was very into them I must admit I cracked "Left Behind".

Better than what snippets I've seen of Fifty Shades.

[CBGLuthier]

7. I made it through Battlefield Earth

Hard as it was, reading the book was a picnic compared to watching the film.

[Warren DeMontague]

16. The only worthwhile thing about the Battlefield Earth movie was Roger Ebert's

merciless evisceration of it.

[tblue37]

19. What about _Dianetics_? Would you read that?

Even if you tried to, I bet you would not get more than a few pages into it. I have never even tried to read Dianetics, but a couple of my friends did and were astonished at how ridiculous it was. (Neither one was able to get very far into it.)

I am also a voracious reader, and I read in a wide variety of subjects.

But I will be 64 next month, so I will not waste my remaining time reading crap when there is so much good stuff to read.

I assume you make similar judgments.

[clydefrand]

2. I agree with you.

[Agschmid]

3. I won't be reading it either...

No interest.

Also this is the first thread I've had the slightest bit of interest in participating in.

[MineralMan]

5. My wife bought it "Fifty Shades" and put it on her Kindle.

My Kindle Fire is linked to her account, so I get all of the books she buys.

She didn't finish it, either. In fact, she got only a couple of chapters into it before abandoning it as a lost cause.

[onecaliberal]

6. I read a lot but not the trash contained in those two books.

[In_The_Wind]

8. I do love to read but Fifty Shades of Gray doesn't interest me.

[LadyHawkAZ]

9. Finished em both

Atlas Shrugged was a paper copy and I managed to resist throwing it into the barbecue and setting it on fire. Why further pollute the planet with that garbage? I packed it away in a box, and there it stays.

FSOG was on Kindle and I did not resist deleting it.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

10. I have to admit to reading Atlas Shrugged but, I was twelve at the time. I tried to read

50 Shades but, after the third page I gave up. It was just too *trite* and I really did not care what happened to Anna.

[MineralMan]

11. Exactly. I was completely unable to care about the main characters

In either one. Adding that to the execrable writing, and it was just impossible for me to continue very far into either book.

[SheilaT]

12. I now I started

Atlas Shrugged a very long time ago. I honestly can't recall if I finished it, but I do remember that I thought it was a singularly stupid book.

Haven't even bothered with Fifty Shades. Just does not seem like something worth spending any time on.

I finally figured out that the reason a book becomes a best seller is because all those people who only read one, or at most two books a year all read the same one. And because they read so little, their standards simply aren't very high.

I'm also highly wary of most self-published books as I've learned the hard way (meaning back in the distant past I bought a few) as there's usually a reason they weren't taken on by traditional publishers. I know that the self-publishing model is different these days from what it was some years ago, but I still notice that problem.

I was recently at a two week long novel writing workshop, and one of the participants there had us workshopping the second novel of her trilogy. The first one is apparently in the hands of some sort of mom and pop e-publisher, and given the basic problems with sentence construction in the second book, I don't think the first one could possibly be ready for any sort of publication without a huge amount of editing and rewriting. Which probably won't happen.

Life is simply too short to waste reading books that don't interest me.

[JEFF9K]

13. You're not the only one who describes Atlas Shrugged as "unreadable."

AYN RAND & ATLAS SHRUGGED IN UNDER 10 MINUTES

[awoke_in_2003]

14. Atlas Shrugged should not be taken lightly

it should be flung with much force

[kickysnana]

15. +1

[Warren DeMontague]

17. 2 Word Review:

Atlas Shat

[joshcryer]

18. I made it through Atlas Shrugged.

But I had to seriously question my sanity while reading Galt's speech.