Book reviews - need a new one

[mentalbunny]

Since CrazyPete's away I'm kinda looking after the forum. We need a new book review tio replace "Catcher in the Rye" has anyone got any ideas and is willing to submit one?

[abstractmentality]

id be willing to do one for Ayn Rand's We the Living. its a libertarian capitalist book, but i think its essential to know how they think. let me know if you want one for that, i just finished it the other day.

[mentalbunny]

That would be brilliant. Just post it and I'll sticky it.

[mentalbunny]

AM, how far have you got?

[bluerev002]

YOu could use the one I made for Brave New World, but its not very good...

[mentalbunny]

If you touch it up a bit until you're satisfied with it (I haven't read it properly) then just post it in a new thread and if I'm still here I'll sticky it, or if I'm not (ie Saturday onwards) then PM another mod and ask them to. Thanks bluerev.

[bluerev002]

Brave New World

Published in 1932 Brave New World is a world living in the A.F. (After Ford) era. In a time where humans are no longer born, but made and programed to do one specific job. A job you are programed to love and cant to any other. People are made sometimes by hundreds all looking the same.

Aldous Huxley's world is one were sex and drugs is what keeps everyone happy. There is no real pain or sorrow, and if you were to experience a little sadness you took SOMA, the drug that is especially distributed by the Govt. itself.

It starts about Bernard Marx but around the end it switches off towards John, a savage that was born in a reservation.

The book flows quite nicely and has a good plot. Its an easy read once you get passed the beggining formulas. Its one of those books that even if it were to have a crappy ending, it would be okay because the rest of the book was good.

Its not too long and shouldnt take too long to read.

(Edited by bluerev002 at 1:04 am on July 24, 2003)


(Edited by bluerev002 at 1:07 am on July 24, 2003)

[bluerev002]

Is that any good or do you want me to make it better?

[abstractmentality]

sorry, my computer fizzled out for a few days, besides my laziness. ill have one for that book soon.

[bluerev002]

YAY!! Cuz mine sucks. :biggrin:

[abstractmentality]

Ayn Rand - We the Living

So then, Ayn Rand, a champion of free-market capitalism. This is her first book, published in 1936. The story is of post revolutionary Russia, i think from 1917 through to the time of Stalin (the end period of the book is inferred on my part by the anti-trotsky sentiment that is present towards the end of the book).

Kira Argounova is the main character of the book. Her father was a factory owner with plenty of anti-communist sentiment. Her eventual husband is Leo, a counter-revolutionary. Beyond that, she also spends time with a GPU official with plenty of power named Andrei. Her brother is Victor, a young communist party member. As can be seen by this set up, complications are inevitable.

The rest of the plot of the book plays out just as Rand, the capitalist supporter of the time, would like it to play out. Im sure that the book has many historical realities within it, as she lived in Russia until 1926, when she moved to the US, but the story is most likely not a true account of a person she knew in Russia.

However, I am sure that much of what she wrote on was very much true. The crooked beaucrats, the oppression of certain aspects of dissidence within the party, the controling of social life, etc. All of these are, in my opinion, important things when talking about post revolutionary theory. She write the whole book, in a sense, with a question as to why any person should hold the state above the individual person, but doesnt put out an answer for this question (i have read that Atlas Shrugged is where she writes her answer).

Her philosophy of libertarianism is something to take into consideration. Her ideas on personal freedom is at where Chomsky called the meeting of Left Wing Marxism and Libertarian Socialism (Anarchism). What she did fail to write about, however, is the idea of freedom from economic oppression. As smart as she seemed, she missed one complete side of freedom: economic. When i write freedom and economic in the same sentence, it isnt meant to mean "free-market" freedom, but rather the freedom from an oppressing economic class.

At 464 pages (my version at least), this is a bit long of a read, especially for someone who doesnt like it very much because of what she misses. It is, however, something good to read as it makes debates with the right a bit easier. The books gives you a deeper look into how the right thinks, which is nice when analyzing the angle the right sometimes comes from.

[Floyd.]

Can this thread be renamed "the book review thread" and it can be a continuing evolving place to review books and cut down on clutter?