I slogged through the sequel as well.

I salute you, my friend.

Zen and the Art was pressed upon me by a friend in high school. Even then I knew it was hot garbage. Kind of interesting though in getting an insight into disordered thinking and mistaking the superficial for the profound.

My pick for a book (without spending too much time racking my brain over it) would be Good Omens. It's fairly light and could gently get people to think about some things they wouldn't normally examine in their lives. And if liked, it leads to all sorts of delight in exploring other works by Pratchett and Gaiman.

Ugh. I dislike having to be a hard ass and bitchy but seriously you’ve made zero progress on this task in a month and don’t seem to understand any of it, but also haven’t asked any questions or said “I don’t understand where this comes from” or “I asked my manager for training on this” just “oh was that on there before? I don’t know anything about that”.

CFM:

• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
• The Fountainhead
• Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Damn, Scola. Why you gotta be like that?

I actually like Jonathan Livingston Seagull just because at some point there's a contrast drawn between going fast/faster and being at the destination and while it's probably not the point they were trying to make it got me thinking about how well continuous functions represent the physical reality of a quantized universe and how you could use that fuzziness in SF to get around the whole speed of light business. I don't really remember anything else about the book. So I'll have to marry that one, I suppose. We'll live separate lives, it'll be fine.

I can't remember why I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance but I am pretty sure that somebody handed it to me after seeing I was reading Zen and the Art of Archery (for a class on buddhism, and that was actually good). I know I didn't get far into it before noping out. I think some guy tried to get me to pick it up again but not at all effectively. So I guess I did C it.

The Fountainhead I have managed to avoid almost entirely. My dad had a roommate in college who really liked it and forced all his friends to read it, so he (my dad) did and still thinks that one scene where a guy eats a burger in some diner in Colorado and is immensely impressed with the quality of the burger in some profound way is HILARIOUS. So that's what I know about that. F it, in the non-literal sense. Fuck the whole Rand oeuvre.

Separately, glad to hear Lola is doing better than expected! And glad the crowd got together

Yes, this. Independent of what I think of these books, it's weird how some books totally get people obsessed with them.

A friend gave me The Fountainhead in middle school. He’s now an entertainment lawyer.

I remember enjoying Seagull okay but I’m not anxious to revisit it.

Flirty packing ended up in a very awkward conversation. Because I am me, and I am awkward. But it’s all good.

I read both Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and The Fountainhead as a young adolescent.

I'm sure it's emblematic of something that my big takeaway from Fountainhead was the architecture stuff. I liked visualizing the buildings