i have read: crime and punishment, pride and prejudice (duh), emma, great expectations, american gods,atlas shrugged, a portrait of the artist as a young man (yikes), the fountainhead, dracula, a clockwork orange, 1984, sense and sensibility, tess of the d'urbervilles, oliver twist, les miserables, the prince, a people's history of the united states, neverwhere, the scarlet letter, the catcher in the rye, the hobbit
have started to read: anna karenina, one hundred years of solitude, the canterbury tales, lolita, on the road, and wuthering heights.
i am currently reading angela's ashes and hope to start on eats, shoots, & leaves directly afterward.
Am I the only one who's pissed off that Ayn fucking Rand is on the same list as people like Dostoyevsky, George Orwell, and Jane Austin, (amongst other literary giants that I'm too lazy to list
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somehow i knew someone was going to make hateful ayn rand comments.
like it or not, those books were (and still are) highly influential.
if you can point out that an entire political party looks to her work for inspiration, then you should be able to see that for yourself- whether you agree with her ideas or not (whether you agree with that political party or not).
you may find her ideas distasteful, but your thoughts on politics and anonymous quotes aren't really sufficient reason to take those books off this list.
The list isn't based on merit anyway. Or politics. It's almost a random list - a list of books people who frequent a specific website find difficult to finish reading. I found it sad that so many people apparently can't finish Jane Austen novels.
I downloaded an audio version of Anthem and it's in the car - I'll listen to it once I get through Daisy Miller and God's Country which I downloaded first (I have been listening to audio books on my commute and it makes that hour a day go so much more pleasantly). I remember really hating her female characters and finding her dialogue laughably bad, but it's been more than decade and I want to try her again since you and Becca like her so much. I don't care so much about the politics. I'm not a fan of libertarianism, as you know, but I read lots of things which have politics I disagree with. Heinlein was a libertarian and I love his writing. I don't really see what that has to do with whether or not something is a good book.
i would suggest avoiding atlas shrugged, as it's pretty overbearing if your not interested in the politics. it's my least favorite of her books. anthem is a good place to test the waters.
also, i'm aware that this is a list of books people were not able to finish, which i find strange as a few of these are some of my favorites.
neverwhere in particular confuses me, as it's pretty basic fantasy, only better, and not all that heavy of a read.
This list is really interesting because it includes a bunch of contemporary "shoulds" among the Dead White Men's classics that usually populate these memes. I think there are very different reasons that people buy but neglect books by Pynchon and Stephenson than they do Dickens and Dostoevsky. I'm also pleasantly surprised by how many of the contemporary novels I've actually read, because I think of myself as being much more drawn to easy-quick genre fiction these days and less willing to dig into modern Literature in my limited recreational reading time. I really loved White Teeth and Life of Pi, though. I need to take a big deep breath and start on The Baroque Cycle now.
You gotta be a great big fan of Stephenson to get thru the Baroque cycle.
Overall, I like it, I really like the discussion of how that's in some senses, how the whole modern world got geared up, especially in terms of economics, but like many of his books, it's like he either didn't know how to end it or stopped caring about it.
Overall, I'd rate it as around as good as his "Cryptonomicon", not as good as "Snow Crash" or "The Diamond Age".
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crime and punishment, pride and prejudice (duh), emma, great expectations, american gods,atlas shrugged, a portrait of the artist as a young man (yikes), the fountainhead, dracula, a clockwork orange, 1984, sense and sensibility, tess of the d'urbervilles, oliver twist, les miserables, the prince, a people's history of the united states, neverwhere, the scarlet letter, the catcher in the rye, the hobbit
have started to read:
anna karenina, one hundred years of solitude, the canterbury tales, lolita, on the road, and wuthering heights.
i am currently reading angela's ashes and hope to start on eats, shoots, & leaves directly afterward.
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like it or not, those books were (and still are) highly influential.
if you can point out that an entire political party looks to her work for inspiration, then you should be able to see that for yourself- whether you agree with her ideas or not (whether you agree with that political party or not).
you may find her ideas distasteful, but your thoughts on politics and anonymous quotes aren't really sufficient reason to take those books off this list.
Reply
I downloaded an audio version of Anthem and it's in the car - I'll listen to it once I get through Daisy Miller and God's Country which I downloaded first (I have been listening to audio books on my commute and it makes that hour a day go so much more pleasantly). I remember really hating her female characters and finding her dialogue laughably bad, but it's been more than decade and I want to try her again since you and Becca like her so much. I don't care so much about the politics. I'm not a fan of libertarianism, as you know, but I read lots of things which have politics I disagree with. Heinlein was a libertarian and I love his writing. I don't really see what that has to do with whether or not something is a good book.
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also, i'm aware that this is a list of books people were not able to finish, which i find strange as a few of these are some of my favorites.
neverwhere in particular confuses me, as it's pretty basic fantasy, only better, and not all that heavy of a read.
Reply
Reply
Overall, I like it, I really like the discussion of how that's in some senses, how the whole modern world got geared up, especially in terms of economics, but like many of his books, it's like he either didn't know how to end it or stopped caring about it.
Overall, I'd rate it as around as good as his "Cryptonomicon", not as good as "Snow Crash" or "The Diamond Age".
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