Devon, I've read Atlas Shrugged, and I have to say...Ayn Rand is undoubtedly the worst writer of the 20th century. Good idea for a story, absoloutely terrible execution and story-telling. I have all her other books but I'm pretty sure I'd rather remove my eyes with a sharp instrument than read another one of her books.
Hehehe...
Personal taste I guess. I found Ayn Rand's writing style and the philosophies she presented to be very interesting and very different from what I usually read. Not at all like Marx.
I would hope so. Rand was about as anti-Marxist as anyone could get. Her anti-socialist arguments as expressed in Atlas Shrugged are compelling, as well as correct, IMO.

I am however, sorry, EmpDev, but I have to agree with Fish.Stapler. Atlas Shrugged is a wonderful story that is absolutely ruined by Rand's out-of-control metaphorical meanderings. It's a truly excruciating read. Rand was undoubtedly brilliant, but it took her 100 words to say what Orwell could in 10. I'm on or around page 750 and can go no further for now. I'll finish it -someday.:)
Any poetry by the Brownings, Keats, Shelley, other Romanticists
Add Coleridge to that list. He's my favorite. Has anyone ever read The Rime of the Ancient Mariner or Christabel? I enthusiastically recommend both.:thumbsup:

If you're talking adventure stories, then, add in any of Clancy's novels that involve Jack Ryan or Grisham's more adventure-based novels. His book "The Brethren" is just plain wicked. :D

Add Coleridge to that list. He's my favorite. Has anyone ever read The Rime of the Ancient Mariner or Christabel? I enthusiastically recommend both.:thumbsup: Ancient Mariner was required reading in HS. I agree that it is a very good read.

Speaking of required reading that worth reading again, how about Milton's Paradise Lost?

Douglas Adams The Hitchikers 5 book trilogy are great books.

1. The Hitchikers Guide to the galaxy.

2. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

3.Life, the Universe and Everything

4.So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

and 5. Mostly Harmless

Her anti-socialist arguments as expressed in Atlas Shrugged are compelling, as well as correct, IMO.

Far from it. The economic anarchy she advocates would never work. You can't simply turn the gov't into nothing more than a police force and let corporations grab all the power they can get. Not to mention how disastrous having no public works at all would be.

The philosophical parts of Objectivism I disagree with just as much. Selfishness is not a virtue and kindness is not a sin. :)

Rand was undoubtedly brilliant, but it took her 100 words to say what Orwell could in 10.

Definitely. That was one of my favorite things about the book. :D

Douglas Adams The Hitchikers 5 book trilogy are great books.

Albeit very simple ones. I prefer more serious/educational/advanced books. :)

The philosophical parts of Objectivism I disagree with just as much.
I guess that I should have stated that while I agree with her anti-socialist views, I do not agree with her Objectivist philosophy, which seems to be the extreme opposite of socialism. My bad.:D
Selfishness is not a virtue and kindness is not a sin.
Agreed. One must be extremely careful with kindness, however, because it can be a real liability when dealing with unscrupulous types. This may sound harsh, but kindness should be reserved for those who deserve it, not those who exploit it.
Speaking of required reading that worth reading again, how about Milton's Paradise Lost?
Seconded!

How do you guys feel about a Paradise Lost/Dante's Inferno compare and contrast thing? Obviously that would take us longer, but i think it might be an interesting discussion.

I guess that I should have stated that while I agree with her anti-socialist views, I do not agree with her Objectivist philosophy, which seems to be the extreme opposite of socialism. My bad.:D

Ah, that's a relief. You had me worried you were a real Objectivist there for a second. :D

This may sound harsh, but kindness should be reserved for those who deserve it, not those who exploit it.

I agree. Exploiting kindness goes completely against the nature of it; in my opinion it's just as bed as petty thievery.

Ayn Rand, though, advocates thinking about yourself and yourself only. The idea of organized charities, financial support for those in need, or simply giving someone a helping hand goes completely against what Objectivism stands for.

How do you guys feel about a Paradise Lost/Dante's Inferno compare and contrast thing? Obviously that would take us longer, but i think it might be an interesting discussion.

Excellent idea. It's been a few years since I read Inferno, though I've not yet tried out Paradise Lost. It could make for some good discussion.

If anyone's interested, here's the complete text (http://etcweb.princeton.edu/dante/pdp/) of the Inferno. It's excellent stuff.

How do you guys feel about a Paradise Lost/Dante's Inferno compare and contrast thing? Obviously that would take us longer, but i think it might be an interesting discussion.

Alright, I'm up for that.

just done reading a great book Darth bane path of destruction it was a great story right up the the last page

Albeit very simple ones. I prefer more serious/educational/advanced books. :)

You're limiting your reading experience by sticking to "advanced books," ED. Not all books exist to educate, or provide some sort of moral insight into the world. Pure entertainment is often an excellent reason to read a novel. Yes, I do derive pleasure from the thought that the author may have meant more than the literal with his use of metaphor or simile but I don't believe that is the only reason a person should read :).

I'm about to commit the ultimate sin for one looking to join an online book club but: I enjoy reading Harry Potter, travel books by Bill Bryson and so forth - unless I've missed something, I don't think Harry Potter has something to say about the state of society. It is entertainment; that is why it works.

You're limiting your reading experience by sticking to "advanced books," ED. Not all books exist to educate, or provide some sort of moral insight into the world. Pure entertainment is often an excellent reason to read a novel. Yes, I do derive pleasure from the thought that the author may have meant more than the literal with his use of metaphor or simile but I don't believe that is the only reason a person should read :).

I'm about to commit the ultimate sin for one looking to join an online book club but: I enjoy reading Harry Potter, travel books by Bill Bryson and so forth - unless I've missed something, I don't think Harry Potter has something to say about the state of society. It is entertainment; that is why it works.
Even though I hate Those Books for their sickly-sweet icky saccharine innocence, QFT/E.

You're limiting your reading experience by sticking to "advanced books," ED.

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough I used that term. By 'advanced' I meant something moreso than, say, a book meant for high schoolers (HGG in this case). Plot-wise, concept-wise and in pretty much all respects they're fairly simple.

Not all books exist to educate, or provide some sort of moral insight into the world. Pure entertainment is often an excellent reason to read a novel.

Education and moral insights are pure entertainment to me. :p

unless I've missed something, I don't think Harry Potter has something to say about the state of society. It is entertainment; that is why it works.

It has some messages if you look, (albeit simple ones) mainly being loyal to friends, standing up for yourself, not always going with the herd, etc. It's not very common to find a book that has no type of underlying idea or reasons for why that idea is a good one.

Education and moral insights are pure entertainment to me. Then where's your sense of adventure man?

Jae the idea with Infero and Paradise Lost is a good idea. I have read the Inferno and have taunted mach to name the quote, particularly the line about what is written over the gates of hell. The Inferno I thought was interesting in regards to the ranking of sin. It reflects on how we rank crime today if you think about it. The worst crime is usually murder and treason and in the modern world, we have the harshest punishment for capital murder and treason...death. I haven't read Paradise Lost so that is one more on my ever growing reading list.

On another note, I have been reading my research materials again since I will be presenting some time in May and I came across my book Tales of the Plumed Serpent. For those who like tales of other cultures then this is a good book. It has all the tales of Mesoamerica and the Peruvian Incas that have been recovered through oral tradition and codices, the picture books. My personal favorites are the Tales of the creation, especially The Fifth Sun and The Birth of Huitzilopochtli. The reason I could tell you these stories is because they relate to my research...Aztec Human sacrifice. yes these are Aztecan tales but the book also has Mayan, Olmec and Inca. Easy to read along with insights of specific culture things like the calendar round. Good book.

@ED: That's the beauty of the Guide - it has no didactic undertones, no hidden messages, no further meanings. It's refreshingly simplistic, I find :)

In a similar vein, and @everyone, The Diary of a Nobody is well, well worth reading. I would in fact go so far as to say that it's absolutely brilliant, in fact.

David Rohl's A Test of Time is an interesting alternative timeline for those with an egyptological interest, though it should be brought into consideration that David's theories make a mess of Hittite history, and should not be taken as the whole truth.

Island of the Blessed by Harry Thurston is a fascinating look at the Egyptian oasis of Dakhla, and very easy to read.

Finally, I would recommend to all Christians, Catholics included, certainly, and to all interested in Christianity generall, Mere Catholicism by Fr. Ian Ker, who is, co-incidentally, the leading authority on John Henry Newman. This slim volume really is well worth reading.

@ED: That's the beauty of the Guide - it has no didactic undertones, no hidden messages, no further meanings. It's refreshingly simplistic, I find

Well, there was a lot of hidden messages within the Guide. The absurdity of it all made fun of real science fiction stories that have meaning behind it. It claims people read stories for fun, not to learn life's lesson, and it was a very damning critique of the seriousness of sci-fi stories.

That is a very hidden meaning, a secret message.

Mere Christianity by CS Lewis is terrific. His Chronicles of Narnia are good books, too. :)

Seems like a number of us are interested in The Inferno and Paradise Lost. Anyone have an preferences on which one to do first? I figured we could do one at a time and discuss each seperately, and then have a bit of discussion on compare/contrast.

I would very much enjoy the discussions we could have here. I also think that most, if not all, of the books mentioned here are valid ideas for future reading (or re-reading, as the case may be).

I concur with the idea of a Dante/Milton read.
If this is was intended to start in April, then we should get started soon, hmm?

And if we want to be chronological, then Paradise Lost would seem to be the place to start.

I'll wait for the go-ahead.

_EW_

Getting started on that is fine by me.
Other pairings I thought might be interesting after we finish these first 2 books:
Achilles' suggestion of Beyond Oil along with Gore's An Inconvenient Truth
Obama's The Audacity of Hope with O'Reilly's Culture Warrior

ugh...O'Reilly?! I'll do it, but you have to promise no Ann Coulter, ever (!!!).

Ugh. Ann Coulter drives me up a wall. Only Rush is worse. I dislike ultra-conservative harpies just as much as ultra-liberal ones.

@Jae: I was going to reply to your Milton/Dante suggestion a couple of days ago, but I forgot.:D Anywho, I'm all for it. There are some sharp minds here and a fresh perspective or two would be welcome.
Ugh. Ann Coulter drives me up a wall. Only Rush is worse. I dislike ultra-conservative harpies just as much as ultra-liberal ones.
Not to mention the fact that she could use about three Big Macs a day, each with fries and a shake. I can't decide whether to call her "Right-Wing Barbie," or "Anorexic Barbie.":xp: The fact that she dresses provacatively doesn't help, either, as it only accentuates her gauntness. She really needs to eat something.

I think she may have had cancer at one point and had chemo/radiation for it, which would explain her gaunt look. Even after treatments it can take awhile for someone to bounce back to a more normal weight.

I dislike ultra-conservative harpies just as much as ultra-liberal ones. Err...what do you consider O'Reilly then? Calling oneself fair and balanced does not make it true. :)

Are we going to make a plan or a structure for reading?

I would very much dislike spoiling something for someone who is reading at a different pace, or on the same note, someone doing the same to me.

_EW_

Err...what do you consider O'Reilly then? Calling oneself fair and balanced does not make it true. :)

He's conservative, just not nutsoid like Anne or Rush. I thought his conservatism would make an interesting counterpoint to Obama's liberal views (which I don't necessarily consider ultra-liberal, either.). I was hoping to find something somewhat less polarized than Hannity and Colmes. :D

If we wait a couple months, hopefully Obama's book will be out in paperback so it'll be less expensive if people want to buy it.

Dante's Inferno--there are any number of translations. Let me know if anyone has a particular version in mind, otherwise any version should be fine.

Is the consensus to read Paradise Lost first, then? If so, how much time do you all need to read it before we start the discussion? I can read very quickly, but most people don't read as fast as I do, and I didn't want to make a due date too short. Does 3 weeks sound like adequate time or do some people need more time?

Sounds good. i have to head to the library to get it since I have no copy of my own.

For some food for thought, I recently starting rereading Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man. It delves into some of the justifications, albeit ridiculous ones, of race such as Broca's hypothesis that smart people's brains weigh more and are more convoluted. Another is on Sam Morton's measuring of the cranium cavity with buckshot. It goes into Yerkes and the so called IQ tests. Good read and certainly a lot of laughs at least on my part.

Is the consensus to read Paradise Lost first, then? If so, how much time do you all need to read it before we start the discussion? I can read very quickly, but most people don't read as fast as I do, and I didn't want to make a due date too short. Does 3 weeks sound like adequate time or do some people need more time?

I think that that should be good, at least on my end.

Do you think that the members who are most definitely participating in this should post and actually commit? Because I think that if we get into this and then it is two or three of us it might get boring. Maybe make a tentative master list and say that anyone who is interested may join?

Dates are a little... iffy because of the time zones. Did we decide on May 9th? (EST)

_EW_

I thought we should resurrect this thread - it's a nice idea and I don't think it ever really got off to a good start. Rather than starting with Paradise Lost and The Inferno - both of which, I feel, are a little extravagant for internet debate - why don't we have our first book as being something more approachable?

So we have to come to some sort of consensus as to what book we're going to pick to discuss. I recommend Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Phillip K. Dick - it's simply written but it leaves ideas and thoughts bouncing around the inside of your head (like a lot of K. Dick's stuff); I mean, what is human? Anyway, I think we should gather some preferences and then we can vote on them - listing them in preference so... an example might be:

1. Hamlet
2. Frankenstein
3. Great Expectations
4. The Life of Pi

We tally up the positions each book gets and the book with the lowest count (that has been placed near the top of the list the most) goes first, then the second lowest, and so on. Sound good?

Read Aldous Huxley. Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited are excellent, and Island is good as well. His books of philosophy, like The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell, are awesome. Even his lesser known works, like After Many A Summer, are good. I haven't even got to read Point Counter Point, which is generally considered his best, yet.

I also recommend Orwell, though I haven't read his works nearly as extensively as I have Huxley's. As soon as I finish The Fountainhead and Ulyssess I'm going to read Politics and the English language, and try to hunt down a copy of Point Counter Point.

Atlas Shrugged and Anthem are also good, and like I said I'm reading the Fountainhead right now, which is good but just isn't up to par with Atlas Shrugged. I need to hunt down some of Rand's philosophy, like Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, or some Objectivist Epistomology.

In terms of philosophy, The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius are good and, depending on what translation you get, maybe great. My favorite one is subtitled "the emperor's handbook." There's also an interesting essay I read last year called "On Bull****" that describes how politicians making things up is more dangerous than them purposely lying. <=obvious simplification, interesting thoughts.

Do Androids Dream would work fine for me, too as a starting point.

If Paradise Lost didn't make it off the ground, Atlas Shrugged will die by page 32. :)

How about Dracula? That and Frankenstein would work well at this time of year....

I've read Huxley and liked Brave New World. I liked Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm, and they're pretty quick reads.

I like Hamlet better than Shakespeare's other tragedies, and Much Ado about Nothing is a lot of fun. I read Great Expectations a long time ago but I wouldn't mind reading it again. Reading 'A Christmas Carol' at Christmas time would be fun. I've not read the Life of Pi so I'd be interested in seeing that.

Sun Tzu's Art of War might be interesting (especially given the Iraq war), and it's not a long book at all. All the previous suggestions I made still go.

If you're looking for plain old fiction, anything by Anne McCaffrey (esp. Dragonrider series) or Marion Zimmer Bradley (esp Darkover) works for me, as does Asimov or Heinlein. I love CJ Cherryh's Cuckoo's Egg too, and if you want pure entertainment, Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat books are hilarious, and Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy would be fun as would Robert Asperin's Myth series.


How about we pick a consensus of about 10-15 books? I can put up a poll that allows us to make multiple choices, and then we can vote--the book with the highest number of votes will be the first read, then second highest read after that, etc. We just need to make a list of our favorites. I'll look through the thread and make a list of the books already here--perhaps we can all pick from this master list then? Feel free to mention any books you might want to add--I'll wait a couple days before posting a list.

In the meantime, while we're waiting for that compilation and culling and voting, how about reading Do Androids Dream....?

1984 and Animal Farm by Orwell are really good books (like Jae and John said)...

Hate Dracula... love Frankenstein.

Art of War by Sun Tzu? I read that a year ago and thought it was pretty good...

Just finished reading Ishmael, and My Ishmael by Daniel Quinn... amazing books that I highly recommend.

If your into politics (and this may rock the boat a bit but whatever) I highly recommend getting Emma Goldman's collected works... along with her two books, "My Disillusionment In Russia" and "My Further Disillusionment In Russia"... two great books that she wrote while in Russia during the Russian Revolution (Which she flat out called a failure before it even ended) ...
In addition, get Cherychevsky's 'What is to be done'... it's about Positive Political Nihilism and is very good in my opinion... and it's in a novel form of an adventure... similar to Ishmael.
Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Freidrich Engelsis is good too... even if your an avid supporter of the "free-market"... you'll want to know how to critique Communism and Socialism and Marxism correctly... (PS: Lenin sux.. don't get any of his books... :p)
And get the Che Guevara biography by Anderson (ONLY Anderson's is good... all other's suck)... it's staggeringly researched and incredibily well-written...

Tale Of Two Cities is really good as well...

Olive the Other Reindeer... XP

Great Expectations is a great choice , so is Hamlet.

Mirror,Mirror by Gregory Maguire
I've never read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy but I have been wanting to and this would get me to read it
Can Star Wars books be included???

I've been looking for an excuse to read Dracula, actually - so that one would be ideal as a choice, for me, at least.

I've been intending to get my hands on a copy of Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies, if anyone is interested?

I think we should all read Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown. http://9.echonetwork.net/Crap/Oh_Internet/emot-downs.gif)

Oh, and Watership Down by Richard Adams too. >_>

Doesn't look like we're going to get many more book recommendations. Shall we compile the poll now or leave it for a little longer?

Edit: I just don't want this to fall apart again :).

Doesn't look like we're going to get many more book recommendations. Shall we compile the poll now or leave it for a little longer?

Edit: I just don't want this to fall apart again :).

I'll try and get something posted today, probably will be a separate poll instead of on this thread so we can do more than one as the need dictates. :)

I think this would be fun, too, so I hope it goes well.

Wizard's First Rule, by Terry Goodkind. You'll thank me for recommending it.