Funny, the thing that stands out most to me about DVC, which I read back when it was only in hardback was how so many chapters were just a page and a half, . . . and often ended in EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!!

if I wasn't a fan of the book the movie would have sucked.

I'll finish of Atlas just because I have to much time invested in it to quit now, but Lost Symbol sucked. Maybe I know too much about masons, but that made Stephen King look like a master at finishing his story

That's what really got me into books. I didn't get into them until after high school. I don't remember what book it was but I read it and then saw the movie. After that I really started to appreciate how great books can be.

I like the small chapters in the respect that it really invites you to keep reading. I don't like to end mid-chapter, but in a book like Atlas Shrugged for example you really don't have a choice sometimes. But with the Langdon novels you say you will read one more and then you read another because it's just two more pages.

I don't blame you. Rand was a horrible writer.

That looks really boring.












:p

I liked Atlas Shrugged. The beginning is a little rough, I will give you that. I thought she developed the characters very well.

The only part of Atlas Shrugged that I didn't like was the tendency toward long-winded, repetitive monologues. In particular, iirc, one of them was a few dozen pages long. Good story and good characters though.

Just finished Part III of Stephen King's Gunslinger The Dark Tower series. Got the whole set from my son so I can read them all consecutively. WHAT A TALE!

It is a great book, great theme, characters larger than life, but she was badly in need of an editor. You can never tell when she has switched settings or characters. I've been constantly backtracking trying to make heads or tails after sudden changes of scenes or viewpoint characters, with NOTHING to denote the change. Not even a space between paragraphs. NOTHING.

I've just got to the part with John Galt's speech after over-riding the TV and it seems it would have taken 4 hours on TV to recite that speech. She is brutally laborious in her writing, but this takes the cake. That single speech must run to 70 pages (I'm on a Kindle, so I can't tell how many actual novel pages it takes). But it is agonizing slogging through the bog of this one speech.

Great book, though. Everything she warns against in the book has already happened in America. Everything. We are past the tipping point where the parasites are over-consuming everything the producers create.

Just today I read that 101 million Americans receive some form of government food aid. Add all of the welfare recipients and SSI disabled and I am sure 60% of this nation is getting handouts from the Federal government.

There used to be 15 workers for every person collecting Social Security. Now there are only 13 workers for every person collecting DISABILTY alone.

It is not sustainable.

We are heading for a social/financial collapse. It is coming.

D'Anconia's speech about money is the best rant on money I've ever read. It was brilliant.

That was the worst part about college. There was just no time to read for pleasure with all the solids.

Sounds like a good book.

I always respected Napoleon. He is very much misunderstood, mostly because he lost and the winners write the history.

I have always believed that Napoleon's ultimate goal was less megalomania, and more an ideal vision to create a United States of Europe - under French Imperial dictatorship of course. But everywhere he conquered, he built roads, founded schools, improved sanitation and water delivery, and supported the arts. He cared about Merit above all else, which is why he had the first black General - Thomas-Alexandre Dumas.

Meanwhile, you know that the British were all about Monarchy and station. The officers bought in to the army and bought their own uniforms and arms. So it was all about station for the officers of the British army. No wonder they looked down their noses at the conscripts. For them it was all about the Divine Right to command and the only world they knew was one of class stratification, the way the French Revolution tried to emulate the American Revolution.

I'll have to add that book to my Kindle list. It sounds compelling. Thanks.

Dude...Stop now while you can. The end is a huge cop-out. I was sorely dissapointed.