Comments on: Roark and Baggins

By: sesgaia

sesgaia — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:49:48 +0000

I read Ayn Rand in high school as well. No idea who recommended her, but it must have been a teacher, since I went to HS long before the Internet. My friends and I also passed around our copies of The Godfather, Watership Down, Stranger in a Strange Land, Tropic of Capricorn, and Don Juan by Carlos Casteneda (hey, it was the Seventies). Women authors included Colette, Erica Jong, and anything by Joan Didion…

By: Mary Witzl

Mary Witzl — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:35:03 +0000

The Catcher in the Rye, The Fountainhead (and Atlas Shrugged), Bernard Malamud's The Fixer, and a whole ton of Sartre that I could never bear to actually read. Anything Russian was on the list, with Dostoevsky and Chekhov way at the top. I loved Daphne DuMaurier's books, but for some reason I was ashamed of this by the time I was fourteen. I thought gothic heroines were trivial compared with Raskolnikov and Prince Mishkin.

By: Tracy

Tracy — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:17:42 +0000

Ah, high school fun reads. I loved the Hitchhiker books, as well as Terry Brooks' Shannara series, The Chrysalids by John Wyndham, and Ender's Game. LOTR was read in elementary school, but I never did get around to reading Rand. I do plan on it in the next few months.

By: Vodka Mom

Vodka Mom — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:10:38 +0000

I DID read The Fountainhead. My mother mentioned in passing to one of her friends that she loved it, and I searched for it in our "library" at home. (I was in college.) I adored it. My mother died a few years later, and that book has always held a special place in my heart. I still have my mother's copy.

I tend to hold it now and then.

By: Kristin Laughtin

Kristin Laughtin — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:30:48 +0000

Oddly enough, everything I've ever read by Rand was because it was on an official high school reading list. I didn't care much for her writing and haven't read any of it since.

I love the unofficial high school list. For me and a lot of people I know, it included Kurt Vonnegut in copious amounts. The Lord of the Rings was middle school to early high school, and Shakespeare, CATCHER IN THE RYE, GRAPES OF WRATH, and Hemingway all tended to be assigned reading. But Vonnegut was huge, as was Jane Austen. Asimov all over the place as well. Toni Morrison to a lesser extent. I still like all those books!

By: Susan Quinn

Susan Quinn — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:23:54 +0000

I read Rand in college; high school was strictly science fiction. If there was an "unofficial reading list" no one gave me the secret code!

By: Cid

Cid — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:33:06 +0000

I never Rand's books but I have recently had them suggested to me.

By: Amalia T.

Amalia T. — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:24:26 +0000

Stranger in a Strange Land was my high school bible, along with Friday, and I Will Fear No Evil (All Heinlein). I also read The Fountainhead several times, and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I didn't read LOTR until college, though.

By: fatcaster

fatcaster — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:33:58 +0000

Nope, didn't and still haven't read Rand (except for The Art Of Fiction and The Art Of Nonfiction).

But . . . Martin Eden and Lord Jim (gifts from my father — I still have both and revisit them from time to time); Andersonville and Signal 32; Lady Chatterly's Lover; Peyton Place and Harrison High (talk about unofficial!); The Catcher In The Rye; Wanderer (by Sterling Hayden); The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich; Hemingway, Faulkner, F. Scott you-know-who; Mailer; Steinbeck; Kerouac; Maugham. I see that I date myself.

By: CKHB

CKHB — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:29:32 +0000

I love the "unofficial reading list" concept! Hitchhiker's Guide and Princess Bride indeed. However, I read Tolkien in 3rd grade, and didn't read Rand until college…