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What Are You Reading, Part 2


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On 9/20/2021 at 3:27 PM, Briar King said:

Has anyone read Ayn Rand? I’m getting her name brought up a lot on YouTube the last 2 days.

The fountainhead is really good, she's definitely not for everybody though. Her philosophy is a reaction against the collectivist mediocrity of Stalin's Russia and she's an unabashed apologist for capitalism and the supremacy of the individual. Her work is definitely a product of her time and her peculiar psychology but her writing is great and the fountainhead's central premise of remaining true to one's own vision is compelling stuff.

My wife loves Atlas Shrugged, I've never read it myself.

She is also the author of The Virtues of Selfishness and the founder of the Rand corporation, for what that's worth. 

The Fountainhead also has a pretty decent film adaptation starring Gary Cooper, if you like old movies.

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On 9/20/2021 at 6:27 PM, Briar King said:

Has anyone read Ayn Rand? I’m getting her name brought up a lot on YouTube the last 2 days.

Ayn Rand is good if you like getting lectured for hundreds of pages on how being selfless is wrong and selfish is actually good (see her book,  The Virtue of Selfishness, which a huge chunk of is her quoting another of her books Atlas Shrugged).

So it's kinda like Robert Heinlein with less imagination. And like Heinlein, if you haven't read her before you left college, you've likely missed your window. 

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Woooo! Starting my October reading AND double posting! This is truly evil of supernatural dimensions! :ph34r:

So I started and completed a horror manga by Junji Ito called Remina. It's cosmic horror, so it is naturally cheesy, even if you leave out the terrible crowd dialogue (pro tip: no one should ever say "yahooooo!" if you want the work taken seriously) and Flash Gordon technology. 

Overall, it gets a shrug and solid "meh" from me! 

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6 minutes ago, lordofsoup said:

I enjoyed like the first 15% of atlas shrugged, but I gave up after like 40%.

This is no mere qualitative review, hahaha, nice.

I never really had the desire to read Atlas Shrugged because of the old saw too much of a good thing... She strikes me as a person who loves to belabor a point.

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Checked out Sweet Silver Blues by Glenn Cook based on a recommendation from @Ammanas . It's the first book in the Garrett P. I. series and it was really good.

It's a hardboiled detective story set in a fantasy world, kind of like Raymond Chandler crossed with Piers Anthony (on one of Piers Anthony's good days). The story is good, the analogies are novel and fun, the mystery is compelling and fully explained, and the characters are great. Garrett, the human beer swilling detective, teams up with a Dark Elf vegan bruiser named Motley Dotes, consults an oracular animate corpse known as the Dead Man, and stays just one jump ahead of all the various factions that are tangled up in the plot who want to rub him out. 

Also just read Dashiell Hammett's first novel, Red Harvest and though it was good, I have to say I liked Sweet Silver Blues better. I think I'm tired of books that lionize anti-heroes. 

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Finished Comfort Me With Apples by Catherynne M Valente. It's about apples and the comfort they bring in the face of horrifying, overwhelming love.

Now I can focus on A Snake Falls to Earth by Darcie Little Badger which if you're not reading, you are robbing yourself of happiness and your future self will never forgive you.

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