Posted on 03/15/2009 2:06:16 PM PDT by Lorianne
link below
A Tale of Two Novels: Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged vs James Joyce’s Ulysses
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=3251
Two brilliant books that are a pain in the a$$ to get thru.
Ulysses is unreadable, but more readable than Finnegan’s Wake.
Atlas Shrugged? Readable again and again. But I would not have voted it the best.
I vote for Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy.
“A poll conducted by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club asked what book has most affected reader’s personal lives. Atlas Shrugged placed second only to the Bible.”
I'm amazed that anyone has trouble reading "Atlas Shrugged". Anyone who genuinely appreciates human liberty will get drawn in and won't be able to put it down, even if some passages seem lengthy or repetitive of the same ideas. Neither Rand's writing nor her ideas are difficult to understand. Difficult for minds with certain hardened views to accept, certainly. ;)
oh but Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist are fabulous!
Me too. I have to think that the idea of a 1000+ page book is daunting to some of the more recent public schools grads but should be a snap to most others. I didn't want the book to end ;-) and as you pointed out, the political and philosophical ideas are laid out in very understandable concrete terms.
The unabridged MP3 version is not as daunting and would be a good purchase (or gift) for anyone, esp. the kids that aren't already indoctrinated so as to be able to use logic and reason.
Oh, the Classic Comics version is quite enjoyable.
Just stumbled onto another “oldie but goodie” that I had on my shelf: Albert Jay Knock’s “Our Enemy, the State”.
It is NOT about ‘black helicopters’. The book was written as a criticism about the FDR regime, and it is truly frightening and enlightening.
It too is a difficult read, it was written in 1935, at a time when true academics had a command of the language that has long since been battered by liberals and union thug teachers.
The book was intended as a text for post graduate political science types, so be prepared.
But it is short and very many things in it are pertinent to what is happening today.
http://mises.org/etexts/ourenemy.pdf
That’s like saying rocks are indigestible but more digestible than razor blades.
Dubliners is readable. A Portrait of the Artist is readable. Ulysses is supposedly great literature, but I could never suffer all the way through it. Finnegan’s Wake? I’d rather spend an hour listening to a rabid paranoid schizophrenic yammering klang and word salad phrases. It would be more pleasant and intelligible.
As for Atlas Shrugged, it’s easily readable. It has that potboiler quality (and I mean that in a good way).
The book was great but I can only read “superlative” so many times before I want to get a thesaurus and make my own edits. But I was definitely drawn in and found myself reading until long past my bedtime. My sister’s reading it now and she works and socializes with some of the Hollywood types. Maybe she’ll come around and encourage others to do the same.
Thanks for the link.
Frankly I found both quotations to be overwritten and a bit silly. That isn’t Rand’s best writing by far. Joyce’s either. IMHO.
How about Tolkien's LOTR trilogy?
Heard the same thing about the Reader’s Digest version...
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