Atlas Shrugged, 50 Shades of Grey, and Twilight...

...are all poorly written, trite, overly-long, boring books that someone said was "good" and people buy, read (or in the case of Atlad Shrugged get through the first couple of chapters before using it as a door stop) and then pretend its some great work of literature.

John Galt is as believable a character as Christian Grey or Edward Whatever his name. Atlas Shrugged panders to people who despise the poor and weak. 50 Shades of Grey pander to women who are tired of broke ass men who are bad and unimaginative in bed. Twilight is ...who knows I only made it through one boring ass horrible chapter.



Okay, vent done.

 

I enjoyed the Twilight series.

It was no Harry Potter but had its charm nonetheless.

 

When I tried to read Atlas Shrugged, I shrugged and tossed it out. I don't have any use for Rand's vile philosophies anyway.

Never tried to read 50 Shades, not interested.

Tried to read Twilight when it first came out. Boring, yes, but when I read that the vampires sparkled in the sun, I wept, tore my robes, rubbed ash in my beard, and wandered the desert for forty days before burning the book and binding the demon within back into the Abyss.

Yes, Twilight is my least favorite

 

The meandering style, obvious Mary Sue, and horrible writing style of Stephanie Myers didn't bother you at all? Huh. I wanted to stab my eyes out.

 

As I have pointed out in other threads, Atlas Shrugged hinges no less of supernatural deus ex's than Twilight does. Instead of having sparklely vampires, Atlas Shrugged has magical frictionless indestructible steel and magic handwavium perpetual motion machines.

 

Yes, yes...all fantasy wherein we have unfortunate heroes that we are meant to empathize with as events occur that enable them to do mystical and magical things.

 

Yes, yes...all fantasy wherein we have unfortunate heroes that we are meant to empathize with as events occur that enable them to do mystical and magical things.

 

Twlight was horrible. How it even got to where it is, is beyond me. And 50 shades of gray is even worse. Why? It's source material is Twlight. It's a fan fiction of Twlight. Bad materials make bad products.

 

I agree with all you said!
But, if you read "50 shades of grey," you must admit that IF MEN READ IT, it would be good for women (I'm obviously not talking about the most "SMS" parts. . .but the rest should be inspiring to men, and do some good to women!).

 

The BDSM parts were the only things worth reading. It should have come with those pages automatically dog-eared. The rest of it was tripe.

 

Atlas Shrugged was an attempt to beat you over the head with the fountainhead because you were too stupid to get it. It was an attempt to dumb down a social order so that "intellectuals" could grasp the straws.

If you found Atlas Shrugged too browbeating... see if you can take the overlay. It might not have been meant for you... perhaps what was meant for you was 15 years older. The first (successful) attempt to apply social constructs to fiction... though unsuccessful in her eyes as nobody "got it". Atlas Shrugged was an intellectual attempt to bring the dullards along for the ride which nobody seemed to understand her literature was the vehicle for.

War and Peace is boring as (*)(*)(*)(*) 150 pages in... that doesn't mean you apply Mtv attention span to it.

 

No, it was just pretty (*)(*)(*)(*)ing boring and overwrought. I've read War and Peace, I've read Gone with the Wind--both big books that were well-written and not something I wanted to stab my eyes out rather than read another page.

 

Because few people are taught to respect good literature anymore.

 

What? War and Peace was amazing! But then, I was raised reading only books older than 1975, so that may be part of it. Ibsen and Shakespeare were my heroes at age ten.

 

Ugh, I LOVED Gone with the Wind. So beautiful, so passionate...

 

Drop page 150 and demonstrate how it is amazing.

My point was not that War and Peace was not WORTH the dedication, but most read it primarily because their intellectual influences mandated its absorption... but because it was worth absorbing. You have to grind through that which is unsound in our structure, in verbiage we are no longer bound to, and threats we must twist our minds eye to see, because the plight thereof, while individualistic and such is it's appeal, is not applicable in this time of history, though its lessons are.

Most read Atlas Shrugged because of it's profound prediction of a certain modality in politics... most do not make it through a few chapters for the same reason. It is counter-intuitive to identify with that which challenges your personal dogma. Don't fret... she was not well received at the time either.

Unless you finished Atlas Shrugged... I don't really think you get to take a stand on it personally... you don't have to agree.

 

What do you mean?

My only stand on AS is that I tried to read it and found it boring, uninteresting, and not worth my time. Instead, I studied Rand's beliefs and came to the conclusion that anyone who could call greed and selfishness "virtues" is at worst a psychopath and at best a terrible person.

 

You should try the Sword of Truth, Zos. It's muuuuuuuuch better.

 

That would be a convenient belief... except that most of your actions in a day are ruled by them. It's ok... you get to be self loathing in our culture. It is actually smiled upon.

 

I endorse this comment, Zos. Goodkind is AMAZING, and ironically enough he is a Randian Objectivist.

 

There's a HUUUUUGE difference between unintentional acts of greed and selfishness and actively embracing those acts and trying to do them more, then calling it a virtue.

 

Rand's writing style was better for sticking with philosophical treatises rather than attempting fiction.

As mentioned before, the characters are often too rigid to be believable, and the underlying motifs seem to reveal a sociopathy deep within Rand. Most of this is summarized well by her fascination with William Edward Hickman.

Murray Rothbard and Hayek were much better advocates of minimized government or its abolition without all of the added baggage Rand's incessant bitterness brought.

 

You know I was kidding, right?

 

Aw, really? So not cool. The series rocks granted, it's nowhere close to the literary giants of the past, but few works today are.

 

I heard somebody mention 50 shades of grey at work the other day. What exactly is it about?