Favorites...
I may be wrong, but I believe everyone has one favorite book. While there are other books one likes and enjoys reading, there is one book that a person returns to time and again for whatever reason.
For me, it is Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. I first read it as a senior in high school (or to be more accurate, right after I graduated), then for several years, I read it nearly every year, almost as an obsession, a guilty secret. I got to the point where I would make myself wait to read it, lengthening the time between reads. I'd pick it up just to read a few pages here, then read another few pages, and before I knew it I was hooked and couldn't put it down until I finished it. I know that it certainly affected my studies a time or two, but once I got so far in, well...that was it.
Throughout my life, I have continued to read it. I can't tell you how many times I've read it over the years. I can't tell you how many copies I've owned, either. Actually, I am getting better; it has been several years from my last read of it, but I can tell that I am getting the fever to read it again. However, I won't, at least for now.
Right now, I am starting to read Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. It is my son Michael's one favorite book! I felt that it was finally time I read it. For one thing, he finally read mine, and we have always shared books. He's always been into science fiction. I have never read much of that genre, so have been dragging my feet about it, but, as I say, it's time. While I haven't read much of it (a few pages since getting it from the library a day ago), I can't wait to discover what has drawn him in. Not only that, but I think I am going to enjoy this book.
Of course, per usual, I am reading a few other books (Elizabeth Spencer's The Light in the Piazza and Other Italian Tales and Joseph Allen's Phoenix: Firestorm), but primarily, I am reading my son's favorite, Ender's Game.
What's your one favorite book?
About Nancy
A pharmacist by profession, a haiku poet by nature, I read and write. I have a book of haiku, Ohayo haiku, am working on another somewhat alternative haiku book, but write other genres. I also read...lots of novels! My favorite is, and...
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favorite book and vicious attack on Ayn Rand
My favorite book is War and Peace, arguably the greatest novel ever written and about the same length as Atlas Shrugged.
Now on to Atlas Shrugged. Like Nancy, I first read it in senior high school and I was entranced. The problem with this was that it gave me an unrealistic view of the world, that everything is black or white. To be fair to Ayn Rand, that is what she was trying to show.
I probably took it to extremes. I became a Goldwater Republican. I told people that they were collectivists and looters. My dad was a liberal. We lived in Detroit. I got into an argument with Walter Reuther (who was a legendary leader of the American labor movement) that labor unions should be abolished.
She had a weird fascination with vaguely titilating, vaguely S and M type sex.
As I grew older, (like one year older), I started to feel that Ayn Rand didn't really account for the nuances of reality.
Nuances like war (war against collectivist communism)
Like Segregation (people who belong to country clubs and private schools have a right to associate with whomever they want.)
Nuances like economic regulation (One can argue that banks can and should be able to do whatever they want even if it brings down the world economy)
There are a million other examples having to do with capitalism, the free market,economic and social legislation where Ayn Rand had strong, inflexible opinions that were logical but only within her own limited closed system. If you say that A is A, that is logically true, but it doesn't tell us much about how to make the world a better place, how to end oppression, how to enhance the quality of life, how to live in peace.
Maybe everything is black and white. Maybe there are only rights and wrongs. Maybe in the world the forces of good are all arrayed against the forces of evil. That is what is going on in Ayn Rand's novels.
That is also what is going on in societies where I wouldn't want to live.
nuances...
Andy,
Thanks for your comments! They are appreciated.
You are correct in that Ayn Rand was all black or white. You are correct further that there are nuances that she doesn't take into account. I think her upbringing in the time of the Bolshevik revolution, her relocation to the United States, and her inherent belief in Capitalism had much to do with her philosophy. That it doesn't always pan out in the "real" world, well...
Still, it doesn't matter. "Atlas Shrugged" is still my favorite, and it still seems uplifting to me. The ideal man is what her goal as a writer always was, and what I see in her work. That her life wasn't perfect as the characters in her book or that life as she portrayed it doesn't really exist matters less than the effect of her words upon others.
I think that is one of the reasons I continue to read her. That the parallels she draws are scary when you consider things going on the world. Just a thought!
Yea. I know what you mean. I
Yea. I know what you mean. I was certainly fascinated by it. And I suppose I still harbor some respect. There aren't that many novels that are really novels of ideas these days. And AS was certainly that. Obviously an ambitious undertaking.
Let's see, what are my favorite novels of ideas?
Number 1 would have to be Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky
Camus, The Plague or The Stranger
Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
There really aren't that many.
Andy, So "War and Peace"
Andy,
So "War and Peace" is the novel you ALWAYS go back to, then? Your one favorite?
I have to admit I have not read any of the novels you mentioned. My education is, admittedly, lacking, but I am slowly reading those classics I missed the first time around (I was probably re-reading "Atlas Shrugged", one of her other novels, or a textbook on chemistry). I hope to add them to my stack at some time in the future.
I think one of the things that most impressed me about Ayn Rand, and I found out about this much later, was that English wasn't her first language. To write novels of ideas, such as "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged", is just impressive.
Do westerns count?
Hi Nancy,
That one book? My pick would have to be "Reilly's Luck" written by the greatest western novelist (in my opinion) of all time. A simple story, and though I personally have no interest in writng a western novel, I can totally relate to your need to have to keep going back. More so, the need to hold off before I begin again, reluctantly turning pages, knowing that the more pages I turn, the closer it brings me to the end once again.
When L'Amour wrote, he wrote in a way where the first page grabbed me and I had to know what was on page two, and so on. After many years of reading this story and other works of his, I found it difficult to seek interest in another author. Recently I have discovered David Baldacci, and once again have found an author who holds my attention in every sentence.
I'd like to have been able to say, "Moby Dick" or "Gone With the Wind" or something famous, but no, it really just boils down to a simple paperback that I could slip into my back pocket. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. :)
Raymond
Of course they count...
Raymond,
Of course, a western counts! To me, a good story is a good story. While I have never read L'Amour, I have read most of the western-like serial novels by Dana Fuller Ross. They gave me a sense of history and continuity of character.
I know what you mean about David Baldacci. His novels grab you from page 1 and don't stop until the final paragraph. I don't think I have missed any of his except for, perhaps, the newest (the one after "First Family").
I'm glad to hear there are others who get totally immersed in a story and can't put it down. It makes me feel just a bit less odd and more normal.
Thanks for sharing your story and sticking to it!
Nancy