I purchased a copy of Atlas Shrugged...

[armyowalgreens]

I will begin reading it tonight. I have placed a piece of cloth between my teeth just in case I start seizing.

Wish me luck, comrades.

[cali]

1. she really couldn't write and her fantasies about women being ravished

are sickening.

[Captain Hilts]

2. Wow! Takin' a hit for the team, you are. Keep us advised. nt

[Tangerine LaBamba]

3. Perfect!

You're at the exact right place in your life, and the exact right age, to be reading it.

I'm just thankful I don't have to read it again.

You might even enjoy it, although, as I recall, some parts of it are horrendously tedious.

Good for you....................

[armyowalgreens]

10. I'm kind of scared that I will become a Randian libertarian...

I know it's highly unlikely. But I cannot understand how people have been loving her books for so many years. It must have the ability to brainwash.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

15. Don't be surprised

if you find yourself agreeing with some of her ideas. For as lousy a writer as I think she is, she's compelling, and the story just might suck you in and seduce you.

That's not a bad thing, my young friend. In fact, that's a very good thing. It's expanding your perspective, giving you a look at the world from a whole other angle.

It will not change - I would bet anything on this - your essential kind and generous nature. It just won't. But you just might find yourself having a bit of compassion for people in the strangest situations, a response you might not have had before.

You'll know who's read Ayn Rand and who hasn't, that's for sure, and that's pretty cool.

So just read it as if you were reading any novel, and see what happens. Maybe you'll like it, maybe you won't.

But, promise me this - if you're struggling with it because you've read enough to decide that it sucks, you'll quit. Life is too short to read bad books.

My page number varies depending on how badly I want to like the book, but, usually, after twenty pages or so, if it's not grabbing me, I ditch it.

Yeah, yeah, I'm a quitter. Bite me. :)

Have a good read.................................

[marshall]

23. I feel the same about all those L. Ron Hubbard books

I like science fiction and would normally be interested in reading his series--but I'm afraid I'll be brainwashed into falling for Dianetics and the rest of the crap they spew.

[subcomhd]

49. better a randy libertine.

[rug]

4. Should you complete this hazardous mission, the Order of Lenin awaits you.

[armyowalgreens]

11. Sweet.

[NoPasaran]

37. The catch is the medal comes with a copy of "Imperialsim: The Highest Stage of Capitalism"

Not exactly the most rollicking read by Vladimir Ilych.

[hobbit709]

5. Hope you found it in the discount bin.

[armyowalgreens]

7. I bought the smaller print version for 8 bucks. I wasn't paying 20 for the larger one.

This is seriously a big ass book. 1069 pages of, what I assume to be, unadulterated garbage.

The Moby Dick of grossly misled political philosophy.

[hobbit709]

9. Thats about $7.50 more than it's worth.

[armyowalgreens]

12. Come on...There is at least 1.50 worth of paper here.

[hobbit709]

17. Kindling shouldn't be that expensive.

[uncle ray]

40. i would highy recommend you switch to the audio book.

i gave up reading it on paper. i managed to continue to be a productive member of society while listening to that dreck. it's easier to tolerate when you don't have to put time and effort into it. i finished it, glad i did but it was garbage. still, good to see the perspective of the self dubbed Objectivists.

[the other one]

6. Cliffs notes version:

This stupid book sucks.

[Meeker Morgan]

8. The one thing that Ayn Rand admirers cannot hear ...

Oh sure, they'll argue all day long about their economic beliefs. You can say anything you want about that, and they'll have some sort of pat answer. They are "saved" so to speak.

But the one thing they cannot hear is that Ayn Rand could not write worth a damn.

I can read a book with a point of view I despise and enjoy the writing. Brideshead Revisited, for example.

Atlas Shrugged is positively excruciating.

[SidDithers]

16. +1...

Atlas Shrugged made my teeth hurt when I read it.

Sid

[we can do it]

13. shoulda went to the library for that one

[YOY]

14. Never actually read it myself but know the gist of the story.

Fear not, I've read the Koran and not gone Muslim. THat was an ineresting read itself. Not for how it's written but the style it's written in.

[Turbineguy]

18. Look at it this way

it's got some fairly good sex scenes. But I won't spoil it with who does who. There are some interesting things to learn.

Around here, I think the reviews are far too negative.

It's a novel. It's not real, like Fox News.

[FarCenter]

38. Alan Greenspan does Ayn Rand?

Back in the pre-Andrea Mitchell days?

[KG]

19. one of the few books i couldn't bring myself to finish.

and that was back when i was young and impressionable and my current squeeze implored me to read it.

after about 200 pages, i was physically and mentally wore out.

[Individualist]

42. one of the few books I couldn't bring myself to start

I've heard too much about it.

[KG]

45. i had no idea what totures awaited me,,,,,

[Cirque du So-What]

20. Atlas Shrugged is a youthful rite of passage

I'm happy to report that none of her pseudo-libertarian screed rubbed off on me, and I'm exceedingly glad that I didn't pay more than a couple of other paperbacks for the 'privilege' of boring myself senseless while reading it. It returned to circulation in the second-hand book economy without having indoctrinated this lad one little bit.

[HughBeaumont]

21. PURCHASED?

Just . . . . why?

After the first 100 or so . . . paragraphs, you're going to wish you visited the library on this one. I don't know, I didn't really feel particularly compelled to keep up with the story . .. whatever it was. It's pompous, pseudo-intellectual and badly written justification of Darwinist economic and social behavior. 1200+ pages of Reagantarian flatus.

Here's a telling quote from one of the characters:

"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter." :eyes:

[Hepburn]

22. If you have not read this book, think about taking look at it, OK?

Catcher in the Rye. :hi:

[muriel_volestrangler]

24. Perhaps you can adapt one of these:

[LeftishBrit]

25. Good luck!

I don't think I could even bring myself to read it for free.

[DailyGrind51]

26. Thom Hartman analyzed Ayn Rand correctly.

She confused political with economic systems because, in her native Soviet Union, they were the same thing. In the United States, however, rapacious "capitalism" and "democracy" are incompatible.

[muriel_volestrangler]

27. I thought she would agree with your last sentence

I thought she was against democracy, since that would involve the majority putting restraints on her 'supermen'.

[Barack_America]

28. Good luck, it's horrible literature.

I thought the philosophy was interesting. Not for me, but interesting.

But the writing? Ye gads. It's awful. Romance novel awful. Which is exactly what the Fountainhead reads like, complete with women being "taken".

[Sal Minella]

29. I found it simply unreadable.

The writing is so terrible I couldn't stay with it more than a few pages.

[Neecy]

30. Good luck getting throught Galt's speech

I read it when I was 17 or so, and far from making me a Libertarian or right-wing crackpot it made me even more liberal. I was appalled by the selfishness, the complete lack of empathy or compassion and the vile behavior of her 'heroes'.

[The_Commonist]

31. Let me know when you've finished it...

I've got something for you, that won't make sense until you're done.

[johnfunk]

32. It makes a great birdcage liner...

[tjwash]

33. I read it when I was a kid of 19...

...and instantly became a true believer.

The government was all bad. All that actually mattered was an individual’s right to market whatever they pleased at whatever any price they could get away with. People's right to rape and pillage the environment and shit on other people so that they could make as much money as possible without any government interference should never be infringed....EVER. Nothing else mattered in a capitalistic system. The political parties were all the same. There were no differences in any of the existing ideologies. Left and Right, up and down, and white and black were all equal. I even had a "WHO IS JOHN GALT?" bumper sticker for a while.

But soon my acne cleared, I got out of the house, and saw a little more of the world than my little bubble of a county. In short, I grew up. Sadly, many Randian fruitcakes have yet to make that transition.

[guitar man]

34. I bought it too

I was at a garage sale the other day when my cell phone rang. It was my wife wanting me to stop on the way home and pick up some toilet paper. It was laying on the table marked 50 cents. Saved me a stop :evilgrin:

[lillypaddle]

35. I read "The Fountainhead"

and "Atlas Shrugged" back in high school, I think. Damned if I can even remember anything about either of them, other than I think a railroad was involved in one of them, and an architect in the other. I think. Seems like there was some sex going on. I dunno. But anyway, haven't had the urge to read them again, probably because of the people who are Rand followers. Certainly they didn't lure me in to some weird libertarian philosophy, as evidenced by the fact I don't even remember them.

[mnhtnbb]

36. Atlas Shrugged was probably the most important book I read

when I was 16: it set me on a course of turning away from my Republican parents toward liberalism.

[gmoney]

39. If you wash out on reading it, consider the abridged audiobook

It's only about 10 hours (the unabridged is close to 50 hours)... you'll get the important points in a more reasonable amount of time. And a taste for the turgid prose.

Keep in mind also that it's deliberately overblown because Rand felt the themes merited the creation of Supermen and that the contrast between her heroes and their antagonists had to be epic and unquestionable as to who was right and wrong.

[BlooInBloo]

41. That was a waste of your money.

[Liberal_in_LA]

43. be prepared for lots of long speeches

[mitchum]

44. She's not a hack...

because "hack" denotes a level of competence and facility with language.
She writes with all of the elegance of an ape with alphabet blocks.

[proud2BlibKansan]

46. It was required reading when I was in high school

Have no desire to read it again.

[Taverner]

47. You need to make a drinking game out of it

Drink everytime a random character starts off on an endless soliloquy

Drink everytime one of those soliloquies goes on for more than 2 pages

[subcomhd]

48. It is unreadable. It isn't just its "philosophy." It's just shitty writing too.

nt

[Doremus]

50. Check this vid of the greasy haired Rand and young Mike Wallace, ca. 1959.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ukJiBZ8_4k&feature=PlayList&p=7E2FD09016EC91C3&index=0&playnext=1