Atlas Shrugged. There were some good points that the story made but the longer the story went on the more it felt to me that Objectivism is good in theory but in practice human nature would corrupt it. It also got boring after a while as the characters had a wonderful tendency to rant about their entire philosophical views on life instead of actually resolving the plot conflicts in any meaningful manner. I shit you not one of the main characters John Galt rants about his views for 65 pages straight without stopping, it took me an hour and a half to finish that part.
At the end of the day it came off as one big essay about Ayn Rand's philosophy instead of an actual story. Bioshock takes a lot of its influence from this book and I must say Bioshock is a better Atlas Shrugged than the actual Atlas Shrugged is! I don't so much regret reading it as I wish it had been edited so that all the fluff philosophy was toned down a great deal, then it would have been less frustrating to read. It's a good book but it just takes a lot of dedication to read as it is very long-winded, after I was done with it I felt like reading a plot synopsis would have been more easier.
As already mentioned, The Catcher in the Rye. I was annoyed by that book because everyone kept saying how revolutionary it was. I don't get how people that from Holden's character, he is just a pretentious little shit acting like everyone around him, even the people who are trying to help him, are elitists and corrupt. It comes off as the biggest temper tantrum ever thrown by a teenager, I just wanted to punch the main character in his smug little face and tell him to go back to his nice little private school that his rich parents were nice enough to put him in and get back in line. Holden was honestly complaining for no real reason, his hatred of authority was irrational when that same authority had given him a comfortable and easy life, maybe if he had a harder life it would be easier to sympathize with him but his life was easy and yet he still tried to run away from it. The Catcher in the Rye is a thoroughly bad book.
At the end of the day it came off as one big essay about Ayn Rand's philosophy instead of an actual story. Bioshock takes a lot of its influence from this book and I must say Bioshock is a better Atlas Shrugged than the actual Atlas Shrugged is! I don't so much regret reading it as I wish it had been edited so that all the fluff philosophy was toned down a great deal, then it would have been less frustrating to read. It's a good book but it just takes a lot of dedication to read as it is very long-winded, after I was done with it I felt like reading a plot synopsis would have been more easier.
As already mentioned, The Catcher in the Rye. I was annoyed by that book because everyone kept saying how revolutionary it was. I don't get how people that from Holden's character, he is just a pretentious little shit acting like everyone around him, even the people who are trying to help him, are elitists and corrupt. It comes off as the biggest temper tantrum ever thrown by a teenager, I just wanted to punch the main character in his smug little face and tell him to go back to his nice little private school that his rich parents were nice enough to put him in and get back in line. Holden was honestly complaining for no real reason, his hatred of authority was irrational when that same authority had given him a comfortable and easy life, maybe if he had a harder life it would be easier to sympathize with him but his life was easy and yet he still tried to run away from it. The Catcher in the Rye is a thoroughly bad book.