Burned once, won't touch again.....

[MrCat]

I never heard of most of the authors mentioned here but I don't understand why Shakespeare is mentioned often. He's not very hard to read and some of his works are quite good even by non fanboy/elitist standards. Granted I have not read all of his works but stuff like A Midsummer's Night Dream or Hamlet can be approached and enjoyed by almost anyone. 

 

I think it's a mistake not giving an author another chance since you might miss on a very good book this way. I love Haruki Murakami and John Fowles, they wrote some of my fav books ever but I would have never discovered them if I would have stopped after reading A Wild Sheep Case or Mantissa. 

 

All I'm saying is that one bad apple won't spoil the entire tree so do try to always give a second chance. 

Edited August 20, 2016 by MrCat

[itsmeagain]

Definitely arch conservatism. Rand originally came from USSR and after emigrating to the U.S. decisively embraced the most extreme variant of capitalism in all of its brutal, every-man-woman-and-child-for-themselves glory. Atlas Shrugged might as well be sub-titled "the capitalist manifesto." I found it an extremely grinding and rather traumatising read.

 

Sorry for the late response here, btw. Still getting used to manually searching the boards.

Thanks Kolinahr.

Another weird thing was this ' who is John Galt?' that cropped up in the book.

I had never heard the surname Galt.

Later I gather that lone fascist and psychopath James Earl Ray used the alias Eric Galt after killing Martin Luther King.

Now he was obsessed with the far Right. Name coincidence? Who knows.

Edited August 21, 2016 by itsmeagain

[Kolinahr]

Thanks Kolinahr.

Another weird thing was this ' who is John Galt?' that cropped up in the book.

I had never heard the surname Galt.

Later I gather that lone fascist and psychopath James Earl Ray used the alias Eric Galt after killing Martin Luther King.

Now he was obsessed with the far Right. Name coincidence? Who knows.

 

I remember that slogan, yes. As far as I can recall, though, it referred to the industrialist hero of the novel, who became a mysterious, prophet-like figure, leading the people to defiance against government crafted market regulations. I was also compelled by your question to wade into the wiki article for the novel, and it seems that there is an earlier, capitalist-themed novel that Rand may have taken inspiration from, called The Driver (by Garet Garrett, 1922), which also had an industrialist protagonist, this one by the name of Henry Galt. Both Garrett and Rand's novels also address the railroad industries, their significant contributions to society at the times of these novels, and their struggles to resist being collectivised by the government. 

 

About James Earl Ray, though, maybe he took inspiration from the book? After Atlas Shrugged was published, Rand became something of a mascot for the far right with her 'Objectivist' philosophy. So it might be possible. 

Edited August 21, 2016 by Kolinahr

[Kolinahr]

I never heard of most of the authors mentioned here but I don't understand why Shakespeare is mentioned often. He's not very hard to read and some of his works are quite good even by non fanboy/elitist standards. Granted I have not read all of his works but stuff like A Midsummer's Night Dream or Hamlet can be approached and enjoyed by almost anyone. 

 

I think it's a mistake not giving an author another chance since you might miss on a very good book this way. I love Haruki Murakami and John Fowles, they wrote some of my fav books ever but I would have never discovered them if I would have stopped after reading A Wild Sheep Case or Mantissa. 

 

All I'm saying is that one bad apple won't spoil the entire tree so do try to always give a second chance. 

 

I haven't read his entire body of work, but I do enjoy Shakespeare. That said, while his technique is wonderful, the style and format in which he writes is very far removed from the modern novel, or even much of the poetry of the past three hundred years, and I can see why a lot of people might be disinterested in reading him recreationally. Even screenplay format stories written in modern language often disinterest the habitual novel reader, and frankly, the bard's work really is much more engaging in the theatre, the sphere for which it was clearly intended (sonnets and other stand along poetry excepted, of course, because they really should be examined on an individual basis). 

[Madeleine]

I suspect one of the reasons why Shakespeare is mentioned quite often is to do with the way people were taught at school.  We analysed the plays we studied so much that it got too technical, and isn't a very interesting way of teaching him.  The same with Jane Austen - all the talk of syntax and various other things went completely over my head, and I was bored.  Although I'm still not that keen on Shakespeare now to be honest

[Lau_Lou]

David Nichols

Yes!

Now I won't say I'll never try another book, but he and Lauren Weisberger are two authors I'll be in no rush to get back to.

Edited October 25, 2016 by Lau_Lou