Alright, i have to admit something

[Ava]

I like, no, love, Ayn Rand's novels.

athem is one of my all-time favorites up there with fahrenheit 451.

[Blue-Jay]

1. Atlas Shat.

[billyskank]

2. Do you think he stank the place out?

"Better give it a few minutes..."

[Goblinmonger]

3. "You do NOT want to go in there" n/t

[Goblinmonger]

4. To each their own

But I threw up a little in my mouth when I read your comparison of Bradbury to Rand.

[Ava]

6. i'm not compairing

i'm saying that it's in my top favorite books with fahrenheit 451(which is my favorite probably).

[Goblinmonger]

8. But even

having Bradbury and *gag* Rand next to each other on the *gag* same list is too much. Rand just goes on and on and on and on and on about crap. Bradbury takes you on an adventure. I'm not even talking politics here, really, just writing style.

[Ava]

11. It you want someone that goes on and on and on

look no further than George Orwell's 1984.. while the premise of the book seems great and i still think it's a must-read book for every person, he goes on and on and on - however i still like it.

I like different writing style's from different people - i don't like reading the same book, or the same type of reading, over and over again.

[Goblinmonger]

13. I will agree with you there

Orwell is a wordy gent. Of course he follows in the national tradition of the great windbag Charles Dickins. Ick.

[Ava]

17. Hemingway tended to ramble on too

before you know it he's the describing the word he used to describe the word he used to describe the word he used to describe a color. :P ;)

[Goblinmonger]

20. I hate Hemingway

woman-hating asshole. I would have a hard time describing him as wordy, though. I appreciate his minimalist writing style which gave us much greater writers than he such as Capote.

[Ava]

23. thank god someone agrees with me about him being sexist

it seems he writes women in his novel to be men worshipping bimbos.

i actually haven't read anything by capote.

[Goblinmonger]

26. You must read Capote

In Cold Blood is his classic. Breakfast is highly overrated in my opinion. I would suggest you start with Grass Harp which is just fabulous and I would argue his best.

Hemmingway clearly felt women were second-class citizens. He was a screwed up guy, for sure, but clearly a charter member of the he-man-woman-haters club.

[Rabrrrrrr]

28. I don't think Hemingway felt women were second-class; I think he felt that anyone not Hemingway

was second-class.

That said, he is one of my very favorite authors - pure fucking genius. I can get totally lost and into his books when reading them. Pure gold. Like wallowing around in a perfectly chilled dry Martini served in crystal on a breezy, warm summer day.

Damn, I love Hemingway. Brilliant writing.

[Goblinmonger]

30. You have a point

in that anyone not living up to the code is not worthy. But certainly you have to admit that in The Sun Also Rises (which is the book of his I can most tolerate--with perhaps the exception of Old Man which I teach to juniors every year) his treatment of the female and Jewish characters are not very good. He seems to go out of his way to make them stereotypes while the others are not.

That being said, I can appreciate the completely new style of writing he brought about. I can appreciate his unique flavor of modernism. I sympathize with his quest for the perfect word and the perfect sentence. He says more in a few words than others can in several sentences. Just not my bag of tea. For contemporaries, I would rather read Fitzgerald any given day. Reading his novels is like a wordgasm. Like sipping a black russian after a good meal with friends. Perhaps only a couple (if that) American novels comes even close to Gatsby.

[zingaro]

5. Interesting. What do you love about it?

I ask because I just reread it at the request of a friend who wants to discuss it.

[Ava]

7. well i love sort of political/philosophical fiction

people seem to dislike it for it's anti-socialism view, but you can turn it around the other way in my opinion. there's elimination of individuality and the appearance of equality that seems more like a dictatorship like that in "1984"

[rug]

9. Puppet shows have more versatile characters.

[graywarrior]

10. What ever happened to reading for the sake of reading?

Shit, parts of the bible are very entertaining.

[Ava]

12. i'm wondering that myself

i like the book, it's entertaining and well written imo. what's so bad about that huh? lol

btw, hey gray! :D

[graywarrior]

14. HI Ava!

That's right. I even dig Harry Potter books.

[Goblinmonger]

16. I'm not saying you can't have your opinion

I obviously have read it, too. But reading books naturally leads to criticizing books. And that is a good thing, too. Or I'm just a crazy English teacher. One of those is possibly true.

[Goblinmonger]

15. I agree

but not the "begat" pages and that is how Rand reads IMO.

[RevolutionaryActs]

18. Me too.

Oh, I thought you were talking about Toby Rand... never mind! :rofl:

[Ava]

19. oh lordy

i knew you'd find a way to turn this into another toby picture thread :rofl:

[RevolutionaryActs]

21. I can turn ANY thread into a Toby picture show

:7

[Redbear]

22. I think it's cool that you can read and enjoy things from different points of view.

I also agree that political/philosophical fiction is cool.

[Ava]

24. give me some political/philosophical fiction on a cold night

and i'm set ;)

[Spider Jerusalem]

25. Rand was an atrocious writer.

Her characters are absurd stereotypes; her FEMALE characters are WORSE than absurd stereotypes (they actually WANT to be dominated and raped...see The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged); her plots are laughably contrived; and her so-called 'philosophy' of extreme selfishness is nothing more than a pathological reaction to her family's losing everything to the Bolsheviks in the Russian revolution. You can like Rand if you want, but nothing she ever wrote deserves to be mentioned in the same sentence as Fahrenheit 451.

[Goblinmonger]

27. I concur

and yours was much more eloquent than my "I threw up a little in my mouth" though I thought mine was funnier.

[tigereye]

29. I remember that phase....

I'm teasing a little. ;)

I read most of her books in my early 20s and there is something oddly fascinating AND repellent, sort of like "lust of the eye," about her philosophy. I remember comparing one of her books to Shakespeare's Coriolanus for a paper in college.I think she is much scarier(and more turgid) when you read her later in life.


Alas, she ain't anywhere near Bradbury.