Anyone read Atlas Shrugged?

[TNDemo]

I need a book to put in the hat at book club and haven't read it. Worth it?

[MrCoffee]

1. Only if you want everyone at your book club to hate you

It's about 1500 pages too long.

[TNDemo]

2. Oh.

Guess that's out.

[nolabear]

3. No. I mean, if it's a college book club or people who can really suspend their disbelief, maybe.

It's an important book, yes. Most people read it when they're pretty young and its narcissism makes a kind of ubermensch sense, but when you quit swallowing that kind of thing and mature, the most you can say about it is that it's a SLOG. A very long, cartoonish slog. The lead character makes a 28 page speech, for Pete's sake, and it wasn't a good, nuanced, fascinating speech.

[elleng]

4. Not worth recommending to book club unless its very socially aware.

Should be read, tho, for historical reasons, imo.

And yes, as above, its VERY long!

[Iggo]

5. Tried.

Failed.

[MorningGlow]

8. Me too

Made it through about a third of it--half MAYBE--and was bored out of my mind. I want that week of my life back.

[Iggo]

9. I don't think I got through 20 pages. (n/t)

[MorningGlow]

10. You were far wiser than I

I kept reading, trying to figure out if I was missing something--this was supposed to be a classic, right? So what was so great about it? Answer: Nuthin'.

As a literature major with a master's degree, there are very few books that I haven't made it all the way through, and only one book that I physically threw across the room in disgust. Surprisingly, Altas Shrugged was not the one I flung. Shoulda, though.

[fizzgig]

12. which book got flung?

[MorningGlow]

13. A lit crit book

The Dialogic Imagination by Mikhail Bakhtin. I made it through a page and a half of utter gibberish (he tends to make up his own words and use them without defining them) before the flinging occurred.

In six years of higher education, it was the only required reading for a class that I never completed. However, I was vindicated when the professor summed up the dude's thesis in one sentence: "Fictional characters reveal their personality traits by the things they say." NooooOOooooo--!
:rofl:

[regnaD kciN]

15. Which is funny, because...

As a literature major with a master's degree, there are very few books that I haven't made it all the way through, and only one book that I physically threw across the room in disgust. Surprisingly, Altas Shrugged was not the one I flung. Shoulda, though.

...Dorothy Parker's famous review of Rand's novel began: "This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly. It is a book to be hurled away with great force." :rofl:

[SteppingRazor]

17. I think she actually said that about a book by Mussolini.

But, Mussolini, Ayn Rand -- what's the difference, really?

[hifiguy]

6. Setting aside its rancid and fascist morality

Imagine 1100+ pages of the most prolix, didactic, tedious, poorly conceived sludge you ever heard from your worst professor in college. That's what it is like to read.

To quote Dorothy Parker, it is not a book to be tossed aside lightly - it should be flung with great force.

[regnaD kciN]

19. I disagree...

Imagine 1100+ pages of the most prolix, didactic, tedious, poorly conceived sludge you ever heard from your worst professor in college. That's what it is like to read.

The description you provided could accurately apply to the speeches of the heroic (i.e. selfish business tycoons) protagonists, but you have to combine that with the actual storytelling -- pages upon pages upon pages of purple prose and unbelievable dialog that would make even the most inept romance novelist come across like Faulkner by comparison.

Seriously, that was my first reaction to Rand when given We The Living by a college girlfriend -- about one-and-a-half pages in, my immediate reaction was "this is the worst writing I've ever encountered." Tried The Fountainhead -- identical reaction.

[struggle4progress]

7. I thumbed through it in a library once to decide whether or not I wanted to read it.

I quickly decided I didn't want to

Read Toni Morrison's A Mercy. The novel is about a young woman who is a slave in colonial America. It's rather short. Structured a bit like Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, it tells parts of the story from different points of view. I had to read it three times to piece the stream of consciousness stuff together, but it's actually very well-written, and the characters seem believable to me. I was glad I read it

[MrScorpio]

11. Thumbed through it once

Decided that it would make a great truck chock.

[TK421]

16. perhaps if you ran out of toilet paper....

[Xipe Totec]

14. I read it

I was young, impressionable, and suffering from caloric intake (in college, eating one meal every other day).

It almost made some kind of sense at the time.

:)

[GomezLives]

18. I read it - GARBAGE

[alarimer]

20. It's a piece of crap.

Recommend it if you want your book club to hate you.

I can't believe I read the whole thing, yet can't seem to make it through Moby Dick.

[Blue-Jay]

21. I'd recommend shitting in the hat instead.

It's pretty much the same thing.

[triguy46]

22. If you're in the lounge, we know you would hate it. Teabagging disguised as literature.

[applegrove]

23. Read "A fine balance" by Rohinton Mistry or "fall on your knees" by Ann Marie Macdonal.

Both great canadian books.