Letters to the Editor
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The Fountainhead!
My friend and I have had a long-running joke about the number of men who list "The Fountainhead" in online dating profiles. "The Art of War" comes up a lot, too. Like that's what you're sitting around reading while you wait for Ms. Right. Please...
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The funniest, most HONEST thing I've read all month.
It's women saying, "Hey, dude, we don't need you. Bye bye, loser." That's what feminism gives us, fickle condescending women. Makes me want to vote for the Taliban.
Thanks for the laugh.
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I want to call Phil Donohue
or some other simpering leftie.
I want to pretend, in a girly voice, that temptation made me do a bad bad thing and that I am accidentally weak and stupid and need help because none of it is my fault. I want to say how bad my man is, how everything is all his fault because he did not pay enough attention to me all the time. I want to be reassured I am worthy and innocent and vital and vagina-worthy. I want a group virtual hug from the audience.
Feel that synthesized soap opera love.
It would be hilarious.
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Love me, denigrating, hateful feminist. Please?
As a rule, I despise fiction.
What I read in a typical month...
New Scientist, Utne Reader, Wired (for the occasional good article), Financial Times, New York Times, the Onion, Austin Chronicle, Salon, USA Today, Bizarre.
Books on my shelves (I have way too many books, they would take up a whole wall)...
Walden, Tao Te Ching, Bhagavad Gita, The Fountainhead, On the Road, The Singularity is Near, 9/11 conspiracy books, moon and mars books, travel guides, books on tantra and esoteric sex techniques, Michael Moore's books (for shame), Whole Earth Catalog, Catcher in the Rye, books on filmmaking and sci fi, The Portable MBA, H.L. Mencken books, The Prophet, computer programming books, UFO books, atlases, feminist books, anti-feminist books, architecture books, books I am in, books on aircraft, old Omni magazines, Bloom County, Calvin and Hobbes, new age books, business books, cook books, biographies.
Shameful, I know. But love me anyway, scurvy feminists.
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Scurvy feminist!
Shameful, I know. But love me anyway, scurvy feminists.
I'm torn, Brightstar, you are so toxic in this letters forum but you love real Fresca (In glass bottles! With sugar!) and where am I going to find another man who loves Fresca as much as me?
What's a single gal to do?
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I get most of my books at library sales...
And I often try to psychoanalyze the people who would buy these particular books, then give them away.
Untitled
Three beat-up milk crates of young-adult schlock,
Seven editions of Benjamin Spock,
Two Gideon Bibles, some Harlequin sleaze,
"The Common Diseases of New England's Trees",
"4-H Woodworking: How to Build Shelves,"
"The New (and the Old) Our Bodies, Ourselves,"
"Hamlet," "The Jungle," "The Sum of All Fears"
"Pat Boone's Guide to Your Teenage Years,"
"The Book of Mormon," Franz Kafka, John Donne,
"Catch-22," "The Battle's Been Won:
Will You Accept Christ?", "Curing the NO!s
in Your Two-Year-Old," rows upon rows
of Time-Life Repair books, "Applying for Visas",
(somebody, somewhere, was a Hare Krishna),
"Paradise Lost," "Weight Loss Secrets Found!"
one missal in Latin, "Notes from Underground,"
"The Rules," "The Fountainhead," "The Works of Graham Greene"
some Danielle Steele novels (but nothing obsence
by Lawrence's been donated, just "Sons and Lovers"),
"I'm OK; You're OK," "We're Not Our Mothers",
Ten "Methodist Hymnals," an assorted mix
of Baltic state guidebooks from '76,
"Color Me Beautiful," "Gone with the Wind,"
"What Should We Think of Original Sin?",
Golden Books, chewed-on books, books about weaning,
"Beowulf," "In His Steps," "Man's Search for Meaning,"
Cliff's Notes on "Deliverance," "The Big Book of Cats,"
"Side Effects," "Native Son," "The 500 Hats
of Bartholomew Cubbins," "The Bell Jar," "Horses:
Castration and Breeding," "Citing from Sources,"
"God's Plan for Your Life: Have You Heard the Call?"
And the scary thing is, I consider them all.
(OK, completely self-indulgent of me. But dammit, I spent twenty friggin' minutes of my thesis defense defending that particular poem. This way, maybe people will read it.
Oh, and I know that titles of books are supposed to go in italics, but I can't figure out how to do that on this site.)
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Read the New Yorker article....
... and saw that one literary guy wondered why an ex listed "Ada" as a one fo her favorite reads after dumping him for recommending it to her.
"It does have incest at its core," he notes, so maybe he gets that in sending out incest signals he just might have nixed himself as good potential Daddy material.
Back in the vinyl LP era the dealbreaker with teenagers was the record albums (easily checked) in their collections. If a girl was cute enough her musical taste really didn't matter. A guy might even put up with her tunes if it meant he had a chance with her. And if he really couldn't stand hearing one more Bryan Ferry track he might make a thoughtful gift of a Metallica album. And if he was cute enough she might even listen to it.
So my advice to anyone who is tempted to ditch a potential mate because Ayn Rand's writing is so hilariously bad (but the philosophical implications don't actually bother you that much -- now *that* is a scary observation!) is to make a gift of Thomas Malthus and see if you can find some common ground there. If Da Vinci Code freaks you out, make a gift of Umberto Ecco. If there's nothing but technical manuals on the shelf, bring over some David Berlinski. Relationships take work, after all.
If you can't be bothered, that's probably a good sign that something else isn't working. Being weirded out by incest is as good a reason to break off a relationship as any.
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Liking books and Hillary must be related
or at least correlated.
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Deal breaker would be...someone who is a self-important snotbag
Some of these posts have been interesting, in terms of learning what books some people gravitate to, but in general the whole ting is sorta hilarious -- I mean, seriously people....you reject decent caring honest human beings as friends and/or lovers, because you DON'T LIKE THE LAST BOOK THEY READ?
I've read about 80% of the books mentioned, including Ayn Rand (how can you resist a book where the heroine is named "Dagny"?) and The Da Vinci Code and Left Behind and Ann Coulter and even some perfectly awful books by Dr. Laura. That does not indicate that I subscribe to the philosophies of any of these authors. Gee, do you seriously ONLY read books that YOU KNOW IN ADVANCE will entirely agree with and underscore the BELIEF SYSTEMS YOU ALREADY HOLD? What a dull, dull existence you must lead.
Needless to say, I also read plenty of the books on the "approved" (i.e., liberal intellectual) lists. I read a lot, and my reading tastes are very broad. I am interested in what people have to say on multiple sides of any issue. My brain is flexible enough to hold more than one idea at a time without exploding.
What I DON'T do is read, or tailor my reading list, to "impress" anybody or look "intellectual". And if anybody (were I single) wanted to date me or not date me based on what I READ, I would be entirely uninterested in dating THEM. The qualities that I looked for in a partner did NOT INCLUDE having someone who parroted back at me exactly everything I already thought and agreed with -- the qualities of a friend or a lover are kindness, honesty, integrity, loyalty, intelligence, humor, patience, sincerity and trustworthiness.
I'd be far more scared of someone who didn't read at all, than someone who "reads the wrong things".
For that matter, if anybody looked at my bookcase to see what I was reading, they'd see...nothing. Because even though I read several books a week, I almost never buy books. I hate clutter, and I don't want thousands of dusty books all over my house. Books can be gotten, free, at the public library, read and then returned. (Or perhaps downloaded and read online, if that's what you like.) I only own a few books that are unusual, or out of print, or a that have sentimental value to me (like my childhood copy of Alice in Wonderland). That doesn't mean I don't read -- I probably read more than most people -- so anybody looking around the house trying to "judge me" would get the wrong impression anyhow.
Someone else already said how "Seinfieldian" this discussion is -- it smacks of emotionally stunted individuals looking desperately for new and clever reasons to reject potential partners ("man hands!", "low talker!"). Of ALL the reasons to reject someone, "I don't like what you read" strikes me as one of the very shallowest.