The following has been making the rounds on Facebook, though it was quoted in the Rolling Stone interview from October 2012:
Can’t say that I disagree, though I am a bit disappointed at the graphic for the cheap shot of using a particularly unattractive photo of Rand.
—Anna
Once again Atlas Shrugged has made the news – this has seriously been a very timely reading! An Idaho lawmaker has proposed a bill requiring every high school student in the state to read and pass a test on Atlas Shrugged before graduation.* I had a series of reactions:
*I linked to Fox Nation because I thought we should have a supporting view of it (though they actually seem pretty noncommittal), but you should also check out the “Pic of the Day” on the right column, because it is super cute!
—Anna
Sigh.
Rebecca read my previous post, where I complained at the end that there were too many characters to keep up with, and commented that I had neglected to mention Dr. Robert Stadler. I said that was because I didn’t care about him. She simply smirked, so of course this chapter opens on Dr. Robert Stadler, renowned theoretical physicist and head of the State Science Institute. Continue reading
I’m feeling a bit broken down by this book at this point, and I’m only a quarter of the way through it (which, I would like to add, is the length of a normal-sized book). I feel like maybe I’m being brainwashed? I don’t even have the strength for resistance anymore. Send help! What’s the anti-Ayn-Rand?
Anyway, the plot is getting pretty dense at this point, so while I was initially trying to confine my summaries to two or three paragraphs a chapter, I’m not sure that is going to be possible, and I refuse to let you escape hearing about some of the most uncomfortable sex scenes I’ve had to read.
Oh, Rand, you almost had me there, you tricksy Objectivist! (I’m breaking into Rebecca’s week of blogging because I can’t quite contain myself on Chapter 7.)
At the beginning of the chapter, when Dagny has run away from a rigged debate and found herself in a seedy diner, she discusses the state of the world with the lower-income diners. Like all good liberals, it was only from their mouths that I began to see what Rand has been trying to get at, and to perhaps even find some common ground between liberal and conservative viewpoints.
I think we can all agree that the state of the production in our country is in trouble, and, additionally, that one of the main sources of the trouble is that people have become disenfranchised from the act of production, that people are too afraid to buck the status quo to come up with original and ground-breaking ideas. From my liberal standpoint, the voices of the “little people” are too far away from the “big people” and if the “little people” try to make their voices heard, they have a very real fear of losing their jobs. Thus, people in the production line might notice incompetence, but are actively discouraged from acting on it. Of course, the two political sides break down when it comes to finding a solution, but I think even agreeing on the problem is a step in the right direction.
So, I was beginning to buy into Atlas Shrugged, right? I was even starting to think that this whole endeavor wouldn’t be as unpleasant as I had originally thought. Continue reading
My only previous references for Atlas Shrugged are Paul Ryan, of course, and a very funny recap of the movie version of the first half on Grantland. This, however, has not stopped me from judging anyone who spoke positively of the book. So, when a friend of mine listed Atlas Shrugged as one of her favorite books, I mocked her without restraint. She, of course, replied that maybe I should try actually reading it, which seemed like a fair point, so here I go with another round of semi-live-blogging.
A quick warning, though: I lean so far left, politically, that President Obama and the Democratic party are significantly right of me. In the 2008 Democratic primaries, I caucused for Kucinich (devastatingly unsuccessfully), and if there were a viable socialist party in the United States, I would probably be a member. I am very obviously not the audience for this book, and I am, under no circumstances, diving into it with anything close to an open mind. I intend to hate it, with my reward being that I can then mock its fans with complete impunity.
Rebecca, who has also never read any Ayn Rand, has agreed to join me in reading Atlas Shrugged and ‘live-blogging’ it for the next several weeks. Kinsey has already read The Fountainhead, so she got a pass. So, with no more delay, let’s get started with the spoilers! Continue reading
I picked up this book as an impulse loan at the library when the title typeface caught my eye. (Design nerd moment: I really like how they were able to make the title actually look like teeth without being totally cheesy about it – very elegant, especially coupled with the lack of teeth in the image) I also had already heard of the book because one of my favorite blog writers, Genevieve Valentine, wrote one of the stories in the collection, and posted that story online. It was awesome, so I figured I wouldn’t mind reading it again and see if the other stories were of the same caliber.
Of course, some were and some weren’t. Well, Valentine’s was still the best, but there were others I really liked, too. In fact, Valentine’s story was first in the collection, and then the second story, All Smiles by Steve Berman, dealt with a vampire myth from a more unusual, non-European culture, as well, so I was pretty pleased. (Actually, both these first two stories are available in a preview of the book here.)
The problem with this type of anthology is that lots of people, me included, like to read about vampires, so it makes sense to collect stories about them. Good vampire stories, though, often use vampirism as a surprise twist in the story, so you see the problem. Just being included in this type of anthology spoils a lot of the stories, so there were certainly several that I think I would have liked a lot more if I hadn’t just been reading them waiting for the vampires to show up.
A not-so-brief gripe to close out this review: the book cover promises contributions from Cassandra Clare & Holly Black, Neil Gaiman, Melissa Marr, and more. Now, I’m a recent fan of Holly Black, and I really enjoyed her story here, co-written with Cassandra Clare; and I’m starting to think Melissa Marr’s Wicked Lovely was a fluke because I haven’t enjoyed any of her other writing nearly as much; but my real gripe is with Neil Gaiman. I love his Sandman graphic novels and every full-length novel he has ever written. I consider myself a huge fan of his. However, his short stories are crap. So, I knew not to actually consider his name on the cover to be any sort of selling point, but he must have disappointed legions of not-already-disappointed fans with his short and hasty-seeming poem that reads more like a pop song. Weak sauce, Gaiman, weak sauce.
—Anna
I ran across this site somewhere on the internet, probably via my current addiction, pinterest: The Word Made Flesh, www.tattoolit.com, is just photos of tattoos that people have gotten that either are text or reference a piece of text. Some of them include short descriptions from the people on why they chose the tattoos. (Also, the site is mostly, but not entirely, safe for work; some of the tattoos get a tad intimate.)
The tattoos themselves are of varying quality, but I find the whole site really interesting for a number of reasons:
After wasting entirely too much time on the site, I have to say, though, that whatever my thoughts on the tattoos themselves, it just makes me happy to see all these people so inspired by such a range of books.
—Anna
*On the other hand, I didn’t grow up with Harry Potter, having started the series well out of college, and I’m told by my much younger cousins that it is a whole different experience reading each book as roughly the same age as Harry, which I guess I can see.
Coming back from vacation, I picked up an old favorite of mine, and a bit of a guilty pleasure. Georgette Heyer is known for her Regency romance novels (and, strangely, also for meticulously researched historical battles). My mother has all of her novels, so they were some of the first adult novels I started reading. Luckily for my tween sensibilities, the romance is actually quite light in these books, comparable in raciness to Jane Austen, I would say.
The Talisman Ring is one of my favorites, since it includes a murder mystery as well as romance. Heyer also does a bit of a switcheroo, where the first 50 pages features a young and somewhat insipid heroine before a more mature and much more interesting heroine is introduced, I believe in a conscious play on traditional romance tropes. Almost every review of Georgette Heyer mentions her humor, lively characters, and witty dialogue, and this one is no exception. Her characters and the farcical plot lines are what make her books such a pleasure to read.
What is not so much a pleasure to read is the racism. Heyer lived from 1902-1974, which of course was significantly more racist than today, and while most of her books don’t feature people of color at all, thereby avoiding racism by pure omission, a few are totally and irredeemably cringe-worthy. In fact, all of the reviews of Heyer’s novel The Grand Sophy are quite entertaining in how they start with how delightful all the characters and dialogue are, and you can just see each reviewer slowly winding down the praises in order to end up addressing the extreme bigotry. I just imagine all these slumped shoulders and heavy sighs, and the ominous tone in which they refer to the Goldhanger Chapter.
It can be quite appalling, and after rereading some of these scenes as a more culturally-aware adult (and an adult who couldn’t quite understand how I’d overlooked them as a tween), my pleasure in Heyer’s novels both diminished and became ethically confusing for me.
I was pleased to run across the essay “How to be a fan of problematic things” online just recently, and was somewhat comforted that I perhaps didn’t have to swear off all things Heyer as long as I stayed entirely open-eyed about the problematic things. Which, I mean, they are blatant enough that it would be really hard to try to explain them away.
The Talisman Ring doesn’t feature any people of color, but has some class issues instead. People of status and wealth are invariably smarter, kinder, and just better all-around human beings than middle- and lower-class people. My increasingly socialist heart couldn’t take quite the joy in seeing the aristocratic young smuggler best the poor working detectives that my teenage heart could.
So, this ended up being quite a negative review about a book that is very close to my heart, but I guess in the end, after all the very problematic issues, I can’t quite quit this author, and that says a lot, doesn’t it?
—Anna
This Christmas, I’m spending the holiday with Tom’s family in Arizona, so I grabbed White Cat off of my to-read shelf on my way out the door to the airport. We had managed to get a nonstop, five-hour flight to Phoenix, and I had intended to take a nice long nap through most of it. Instead, I did nothing but read this book, and finished all but the last 50 pages by the time we landed, which I promptly finished that night.
Author Holly Black builds a very interesting world with crime families that deal in illegal magic that can control or kill others with just a touch of the hand.* Our protagonist (I don’t quite want to call him a hero) is introduced to us as the youngest son of a somewhat minor crime family and the only member without a magical ability, so he struggles to remain equal to the other members through mundane cons.
The brilliant thing about the book is that the whole thing is a string of cons, making up one giant one, and the reader is along for the ride. It is one of those rare narratives where each twist surprised me as it came up, but also made absolute sense in retrospect.
One of the praise blurbs on the inside cover of the book describes it as “part X-Men and part Sopranos,” and for some reason I find that really kind of off-putting, even though I enjoyed both of those. However, after having finished the book, I had to agree that it is a pretty good description, but instead of the amalgam of the kind of crappy parts of both, which is what I immediately feared, it takes the best of both and makes something even better.
The sequel, Red Glove, is already out, and I’m going to track that down as soon as I get home (although, I also now need a book for my flight home again), and then the third book of the trilogy, Black Heart, is due in April 2013.
Anyway, happy holidays to you all, and I hope you get lots of good books for presents!
—Anna
*Very minor spoiler and pet peeve: since a bare touch of a hand can be so dangerous, everyone is this world wears gloves, which I found vaguely interesting until they put in details like “licking the grease from the French fries off of the gloves” that both makes it so much more realistic, and somehow just really grosses the hell out of me.
Biblio-therapy 