10 Books Every American Should Read

[MassRuss]

THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS by John Boyne

FRANKENSTEIN by Mary Shelly

Agree about THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH by William L Shirer.

 

[MassRuss]

But i want all Americans to fear god !!!

If he/she is real, I don't believe God would want to be feared.

 

[Telstra]

If he/she is real, I don't believe God would want to be feared.

I'm not sure you know my history of posts.
I usually make fun/mock religion (god).

 

[GhostMost]

Fuck Ayn Rand, a more unrealistic portrayal of capitalism cannot be found. What she did was apply her frustrated communist fervor to a capitalist idea that never existed and never realized she never left her ideological past behind. She simply swaped one for the other and pretended there was a difference.

What every American should read is "A Handmaids Tale," Margaret Atwood. That's a hell of a lot more relevant.

She did portray her American Dream in Atlas. Sure it's controversial to most, but it's considered an American classic by many.

LET'S ADD HURRY POTTER

 

[GhostMost]

Ayn Rand... it was her kind of thinking that led to many of the economic problems we have today... I'm with Tx-Beau on this one... it's complete frivolous fantasy.

are you addressing me? weird I thought I was blocked.

 

[TX-Beau]

She did portray her American Dream in Atlas. Sure it's controversial to most, but it's considered an American classic by many....

Ayn Rand? Controversial? She’s about as controversial as vanilla ice cream.

She’s not original either. Frankly the overwhelming image that pops into one’s mind when reading Ayn Rand is one of those Stalinist giant statues of the upright proletariat looking loftily into the future – only Ayn’s is wearing a suit.

Her mind never shed its Soviet era blinders. She certainly never really understood Americans or the American Mythology she so happily plagiarized. Frankly the reasons she’s loved amount to context and the huge rim job she gave our collective American asshole. All she did was take Soviet style propaganda and paint it red white and blue.

She’s loved on the right precisely because she never said anything new or controversial or dabbled in reality.

If she wanted to say something controversial, she could have explored the relationship between her “American Dream,” and the American Dreams of say, Jefferson or Franklin, and what the former has done to the latter. But that would have required her to understand us a whole lot better.

All those rugged individualists standing nobly in communist propaganda poses were all the sweeter coming from a communist defector during the heyday of the cold war, forget she’s not a great writer, thinker, or artist, she has our collective cock down her throat and doesn’t that feel nice?

The American Mythology she’s taken up isn’t about nobility or individualism or for fuck’s sake “objectivism,” LOL. It’s about greed. We idolize that particular paradigm because it tells us that any poor American slob can get rich and participate in the glut of excess at the top of our social order. We idolize because that tells us we can get there too, and isn’t that a rosy thought? Ayn never understood that.

We don’t like to talk about that. Then along comes Ayn tugging down our collective zipper, fondling our collective jewels, swallowing our collective cock, and drawing her Soviet style jingoistic curtain across that ignoble little fact, while we collectively nut down her throat.

And hey, who doesn’t like a girl who swallows?

 

[TX-Beau]

...I'm saying that GWTW gets a bad rep because it wrote about slavery realistically through the eyes of a southerner in the late 1800's...

Actually it doesn't. It realistically depicts a racist fantasy about slavery in the south popular in the 1920's or so.

 

[TX-Beau]

For example, why didn't Scarlet own a passel of mocha half brothers and sisters?

 

[TX-Beau]

..."One hundred years of solitude" (1967) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez...

..."The name of the rose" (1980) Umberto Ecco

Marquez is a great writer, but I wouldn't put him on this list. He'd be on the list of authors people who like to read should read.

Eco is also great, but he does tend to get bogged down in the esoterica of say, the monastic rule, i liked this book, but At times it was trying, only my awe at his scholarship kept me awake through parts of it. It's also one of those books for my list above. Foucault's Pendulum wasn't as tight but I think it was a better book. Just love a good conspiracy theory, and I still vociferously maintain the book that "DaVinci Code," ripped off. Badly.

 

[GhostMost]

Ayn Rand? Controversial? She’s about as controversial as vanilla ice cream.

She’s not original either. Frankly the overwhelming image that pops into one’s mind when reading Ayn Rand is one of those Stalinist giant statues of the upright proletariat looking loftily into the future – only Ayn’s is wearing a suit.

Her mind never shed its Soviet era blinders. She certainly never really understood Americans or the American Mythology she so happily plagiarized. Frankly the reasons she’s loved amount to context and the huge rim job she gave our collective American asshole. All she did was take Soviet style propaganda and paint it red white and blue.

She’s loved on the right precisely because she never said anything new or controversial or dabbled in reality.

If she wanted to say something controversial, she could have explored the relationship between her “American Dream,” and the American Dreams of say, Jefferson or Franklin, and what the former has done to the latter. But that would have required her to understand us a whole lot better.

All those rugged individualists standing nobly in communist propaganda poses were all the sweeter coming from a communist defector during the heyday of the cold war, forget she’s not a great writer, thinker, or artist, she has our collective cock down her throat and doesn’t that feel nice?

The American Mythology she’s taken up isn’t about nobility or individualism or for fuck’s sake “objectivism,” LOL. It’s about greed. We idolize that particular paradigm because it tells us that any poor American slob can get rich and participate in the glut of excess at the top of our social order. We idolize because that tells us we can get there too, and isn’t that a rosy thought? Ayn never understood that.

We don’t like to talk about that. Then along comes Ayn tugging down our collective zipper, fondling our collective jewels, swallowing our collective cock, and drawing her Soviet style jingoistic curtain across that ignoble little fact, while we collectively nut down her throat.

And hey, who doesn’t like a girl who swallows?

Well then we should just burn that book then.

 

[TX-Beau]

?

If you want to read a great book about Americans, Go read Cannery Row. I'll let you keep your copy of Atlas Shrugged, I'm just kind that way.

 

[chrisrobin]

I don't think we could go wrong with any book on this thread (please scratch The Turner Diaries - I was just kidding ).

Here are a couple more "classics":

The American Political Tradition
Anti-Intellectualism in America - Richard Hofstadter*

*You may not to read this one if you watch FOX.

 

[chrisrobin]

Well then we should just burn that book then.

No book-burning please! It's sooooo thirties.

 

[Sexpun de Come]

Actually it doesn't. It realistically depicts a racist fantasy about slavery in the south popular in the 1920's or so.

I dunno. I'm halfway through it and a vast majority of what I've read is focused solely on Scarlett's relationship with Rhett and her struggles with society's view of her. Sure there are slaves around the house, and every other person owns slaves, but I fail to see it as being saturated with anti-black propoganda like a few people have warned me about.

 

[Kulindahr]

And perhaps Stranger in a Strange Land.

That's one that a lot of people miss the social commentary in, and just see a bizarre story. But it is a potent comment on public religion, government, the mix of the two, morals, their relation to the preceding, politics, and the power of the individual.

 

[Kulindahr]

False for Atlas Shrugged...

And this is quickly turning into "my favorite books". If the topic is "...that every American should read", then there needs to be a purpose to the selection.

Otherwise I can just list a bunch of science fiction for no other reason than that some examples of it are amazing literature. But do I think "every American should read them"? Definitely not.

The only reason I think could be given that every American should read Atlas Shrugged is to see a shallow system of thought raised to false greatness. It's a great tale, but should be in the fantasy section rather than anywhere else.

 

[Kulindahr]

But i want all Americans to fear god !!!

I'll venture that most Americans who claim to fear God are worried only about their own peers.

Were I as good a writer as Ursula Le Guin, I'd turn that into a penetrating and devastating novel, one the people who most need its message would never grasp.

 

[Kulindahr]

Ayn Rand? Controversial? She’s about as controversial as vanilla ice cream.

She’s not original either. Frankly the overwhelming image that pops into one’s mind when reading Ayn Rand is one of those Stalinist giant statues of the upright proletariat looking loftily into the future – only Ayn’s is wearing a suit.

. . . .

All those rugged individualists standing nobly in communist propaganda poses were all the sweeter coming from a communist defector during the heyday of the cold war, forget she’s not a great writer, thinker, or artist, she has our collective cock down her throat and doesn’t that feel nice?

The American Mythology she’s taken up isn’t about nobility or individualism or for fuck’s sake “objectivism,” LOL. It’s about greed. We idolize that particular paradigm because it tells us that any poor American slob can get rich and participate in the glut of excess at the top of our social order. We idolize because that tells us we can get there too, and isn’t that a rosy thought? Ayn never understood that.

Objectivism I think was her rational to herself for having switched from collectivism to greed, a philosophy invented to soothe her conscience.

Any more, when I think of Rand what hits me is described by one word pulled out of a sentence in Atlas Shrugged at a conference after she'd claimed that every word in the book had a place and a reason for being there. The word was "grey", and to me it describes the world she lusted for, which she saw in living colors that existed only in her imagination.

And it's a grey world because what she overlooks is that the brilliant success of her capitalist tyrants/titans is bought by trampling the great majority of people into a dismal, colorless poverty. She ignores that because it gives the lie to her dream of capitalism as the thing that has raised out standard of living so much more than that of others -- while the truth is that what has raised our standard of living is that we the people have required of the titans what the Bible says: from those to whom much is given, much is required.

 

[Kulindahr]

No book-burning please! It's sooooo thirties.

I burned a book once. The piece of trash was supposedly a novel, but what it really was, was a propaganda piece, of radical feminism, arguing that all men are rapists who should be kept under lock and key until needed for breeding. A sub argument was that gays should be euthanized the moment they were discovered, because the only function of males is to service females.

 

[GhostMost]

The only reason I think could be given that every American should read Atlas Shrugged is to see a shallow system of thought raised to false greatness. It's a great tale, but should be in the fantasy section rather than anywhere else.

Fantasy section rather than fiction? That's a little too much. No not even too much it makes no sense.