I make me laugh.
The Minearverse 3: The Network Is a Harsh Mistress
[NAFDA] "There will be an occasional happy, so that it might be crushed under the boot of the writer." From Zorro to Angel (including Wonderfalls and The Inside), this is where Buffistas come to anoint themselves in the bloodbath.
It makes me laugh too!
I think my Ayn Rand issue... rests around the idea that her whole philosophy was justification for behavior that was juvenile and selfish, unnecessarily self-important and self-indulgent and just generally crappy.
I agree, and I don't like her writing either. Objectionable content + unappealing style = I think I'll read something else. Such as Elvis Shrugged.
I adored Fu Manchu. (I knew it was bad and Bad For Me; I just loved the over-the-top melodrama.)
I worry about rereading Hermann Hesse for just this reason.
I don't know that it changed my life or anything, but I really liked Siddhartha. I dug the theme of duality.
joe, she wrote one piece that I loved. It was the first chapter of one of her books. She described something about how the woman stood on the threshold of train door like a dancer in the wings, waiting before a performance. How she ended that chapter (bringing it around to that image), was succinct and just beautiful.
It stuck with me more so than objectivism itself.
PC, most of his books deal with duality. It was Narcissus and Goldmand that got me. What a fantastic book. I'm a bit afraid to reread less I like it much less than I did then.
I worry about rereading Hermann Hesse for just this reason.
I remember reading Beneath the Wheel as a break during finals. Bad, bad idea. Very bad.
My Rand epiphany was early high school, by junior year I was over it. I have a friend who is just now reading it and having her epiphany. I keep trying to tell her to lie down and it will pass.
I think I was the wrong age for Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I just couldn't get too excited about Phaedros.