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Re: Atlas Shrugged 

By: De_Composed in 6TH POPE | Recommend this post (4)
Wed, 27 Mar 24 1:18 PM | 60 view(s)
Boardmark this board | 6th Edition Pope Board 		Msg. 51617 of 60008
(This msg. is a reply to 50263 by De_Composed)
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I finished 'Atlas Shrugged' two days ago. My copy is 1,168 pages so getting through it in six weeks was an effort. But I had to keep up with my buddy! He's blind, you see, which might work to his advantage in that regard since he has to listen to an audiobook and is held to a certain pace. I don't know if that makes his comprehension better or worse, but I'm sure it bolsters his listening skills.

And I'm a slow reader, doubly so thanks to also taking notes on the books... the WORTHWHILE books... we've read. Notes come in handy when we discuss what we've read, and I like being able to reference them much later when I need refreshment in some aspect. I've done that surprisingly often.

In the case of Atlas Shrugged, my notes came to 51 pages. That set a new personal record.

The next book has already been chosen and ordered. It's a return to the author of 'In Search of Schrodinger's Cat,' which I read a year ago and loved. I figure and hope that the author who made quantum mechanics digestible probably did as well with Einstein's General Theory. I tried reading Einstein's own book on Relativity a few months ago. I only got halfway through and aborted, realizing that I wasn't understanding it at all.

This time I expect to do better.










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The above is a reply to the following message:
The Blind Watchmaker
By: De_Composed in 6TH POPE
Sat, 17 Feb 24 5:37 AM 		Msg. 50263 of 60008

Last month's book was 'The Emperor of All Maladies' - on the history of cancer and the fight against it. It took me a little over a month. Hey, I'm not a speed reader! Nor was it a novel. It's more like a college text, and getting through it in one month took a bit of work.

Today I finished 'The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design,' by Richard Dawkins. It took me a little LESS than a month to get through its 318 pages, but the concepts were even harder than Emperor's. It had some interesting points, but I wouldn't recommend it. To be honest, I found most of it dull. Dawkins is loquacious, and his writing style seems to be 'stream of consciousness,' even if it's not. He constantly goes off on tangents, and I found it hard to stay with him - especially when he references something like Lamarckism that he may have last touched upon 100 pages earlier.

But wow, is the guy ever smart. There's no doubt of that. The Economist called this book "as readable and vigorous a defense of Darwinism as has been published since 1859" - and I don't think that's an exaggeration.

My other criticism of the book is that while it purports to be about the evidence against "design," most of the book was on other things - such as attacks on each and every other well known theory for how we came to be. His attacks are sound, but they're largely off topic IMO. I'm glad I read it, but I think its 318 pages could have been whittled down to perhaps 31 with no real loss to what the average reader will take away from it.

The book was my buddy's pick. He'd read it several times before. So, next, I'm picking one of MY favorite novels: Atlas Shrugged. I've read it twice. If you guys haven't read it, you should. (I'd be very surprised if CTJ hasn't.)

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