P.J. O’Rourke, huh. Megan’s Mr. Substantive??

Atlas Shrugged changed my mind, alright. When my best friend gave it to me before shipping off to Wharton and told me it had changed her life, I realized that she was a sociopath and that I needed some new friends.

Okay, I’ll play.

Animal Farm, George Orwell

Welcome to the Monkeyhouse, Kurt Vonnegut

and Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot, Al Franken

…because a fucking sitting Senator wrote it, bitchez.

I think Atlas Shrugged would be great reading for a bunch of apes. It could keep them occupied and get their minds off their bananas.

Nietzsche’s idea the Superior Man creates his own morality I’m sure Darth read that and thought I’ll create my Own Evil!
The Bible lots of things that can be taken different ways and misunderstood.
The Art of War and the Prince somehow every would be evil Genius thinks that the pursuit of power makes them Absolutely Right all of the time. The objections of lessor men bound by morals are to be laughed at.
Never mind that most folks who think they are Nietzschean Supermen are not I have never met one and can’t think of a single historical example.
Most Nietzschean’s think we object out of morality rather its stupidity. Torture doesn’t work, Tax Cuts in the Middle of a war, Terry Schiavo is not Brain Dead.
Why give a book to one just looking to justify his own personal absolute power and quest to fulfill his desires?
The Bible won’t learn a person like that anymore than my Pet Goat would.

1984 – George Orwell
A People’s History Of The United States – Howard Zinn
A Hall Of Mirrors – Robert Stone

what three books you would recommend if you wanted to change the mind of someone who disagreed with you?

I’d love it if Republicans would read Nixonland.

With regard to that monstrosity of literature so often cited by those on the right, I think it best to bust out one of the best quotes of recent years:

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

Another quote I love about Rand and her work, from Hendrik Hertzberg:

It would be unfair, of course, to speculate that if Ayn Rand had somehow found herself in Josef Stalin’s shoes she would have sent millions to die in the Gulag. But I’m not so sure that if the former Iosif Dzhugashvili had found himself wearing… the dress of the former Alissa Rosenbaum, he wouldn’t have written “Atlas Shrugged.” Both as a littérateur and as a thinker, he was that good.

Atlas Shrugged: too silly for literature, too expensive for a doorstop.

The Giver by Lois Duncan

The Coffin Tree by Wendy Law-Yone

The Big Four by Agatha Christie

None of them have fuck-all to do with politics, but I can guarantee they are all better reads than anything MM2 suggests.

The Illuminatus! trilogy. Three books that will change your life, guaranteed.

John Dillinger died for you…

It Can’t Happen Here

The Jungle

Cat’s Cradle

It’d really all depend on how the person read the book, wouldn’t it?

I mean, if your average Jesus-humping conservative actually read the Bible with an open mind, things like the importance of genuine compassion for your fellow man might strike them. But most likely, not.

Knufflebunny by Mo Willems

The Essential Calvin & Hobbes by Sam Watterson

Republican Gommorah by Max Blumenthal

I lerve it when they cite Atlas Shrugged. As I never tire of saying, I’m glad I read it (ALL OF IT) because it allows me to dismiss, forever, anyone who takes it seriously.

In its place, spend half the time and get a hundred times the pleasure, and read:

Portnoy’s Complaint
JR
Paul Prudhomme’s Louisiana Kitchen

Here goes:

World War Z by Max Brooks
I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe
Winner’s Guide to Texas Hold’em Poker by Ken Warren

OK, I’m sitting in a library and those are the first three books I saw – but really, they make as much sense as Megan’s list.

Even at 14 I realized the Atlas Shrugged sucked pigs’ butts. Miserably written piece of puerile tripe (when you impress a 14 year old as puerile, you probably did something wrong).

I’ll try the fiction route.

Invisible Man – Ellison
Native Speaker – Chang-Rae Lee
The Sheltering Sky – Bowles
*Atlas Shrugged – Crazy Lady With Accent

While the first three are not explicitly political liberal works, I believe they are good starter fodder to aid Greater Wingnuttia in thinking outside of their personal experiences and preconceptions.

*Atlas Shrugged is NOT to be read. It is to be used as a 15 lb. bludgeon to smash committed objectivists over the head in the hopes that the ensuing amnesia will cause them to forget their entire ideology.

Ya know, these people would probably be a lot better off if they read just one book … just one, this one. That pretty much sums it up, right?

*g*

Hear hear.

Sorry, I don’t know of any books that can cure psychopathy.

“The Stars My Destination” Alfred Bester
“Slaughterhouse Five” – by Vonnegut
And either “Call It Courage by Armstrong Sperry or “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail” by Thompson

I had to buy the Bester and donate it to my county public library. 40 copies each of the every Jenkins/LaHaye POS and not a single copy in the district of “The Stars My Destination”

The Stupid have too much input.

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but atlas shrugged?

That’s also his preferred pickup line.

How about:
The Constitution for Dummies
The Bible for Dummies
and
Political Ideologies for Dummies.

None of which actually exist, by the way, but whatever…

Catch 22

For conservatives, I’d say A Confederacy of Dunces and they’d probably go for it because its got Confederacy in the title. But in the end it would probably go over their heads cause they wouldn’t get its about them.

Gadzooks! Have you not heard of DIORETIX – The Science of Matter over Mind?

“You better read it. And Quick! That book will change your life. Know what I mean?”

From the chapter, The Robot is Dreaming:

To be an individual and to be yourself, you do not have to do a thing.

Sheeze! Not convinced? Then read this from the chapter A Freak of Nature:

Even the idea that you should control your thought in order to be in a thoughtless or peaceful state is created by thought, so that it can maintain its continuity thgrough some petty little experience, through some thoughtless state you are interested in.

Still thinking “Um, what does it all mean?”

If you think you can read and understand this book, you may be quite off the mark. “Anybody who comes and listens to me and tries to understand what I am trying to put across is wasting his time…”

Other books by the same author: No way out

“Political institutions and ideologies are the warty outgrowth of the religious thinking of the MAN:” (My bold.)

And, of course, Mind is a Myth

This is a story of a man who had it all — looks, wealth, culture, fame, travel, career — and gave it all up to find for himself the answer to his burning question, “is there anything like freedom, enlightenment or liberation behind all of the abstractions the religions have thrown at us?”

He never got an answer.

So the next time you find yourself in a Maserati in Beverly Hills…
Make it your goal to remove the water at the bottom of the ocean.
…know what I mean?!

Otter? Otter iz this you? And the OtterDotters?

/GWPDA

…and for lifechanging for conservatives, _The Marching Morons_ should do it.

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull
My Life by Burt Reynolds
Touch Me: The Poems of Suzanne Somers.

I’m not out to change any minds, I just really hate people who disagree with me.

Tik-Tok by John Sladek
Small Gods by Terry Pratchett
The Left Leg by Phebe Atwood Taylor writing as Alice Tilton

The [My] Pet Goat (Engelman & Bruner). Every Rethuglican must read this book. That’s the only way we’ll get 21% of them to understand it.

Only Fools and Goatsuckers (Jonathon Downes). Oddly, this book is not about what you think.

Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (Hofstadter). I doubt that there is one Rethuglican in the world that can understand this book. Most will be bored, but some will understand just enough to fry their tiny brains. With any luck, that should clear out the pundits.

The Story of O
Ham On Rye
My life as a Small Boy ( by Wally Cox)

P.S. -And if still their minds don’t change let them be “hobbled” by Kathy Bates so we can recognize them by their blood-curdling screams of excruciating pain…

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
Catch-22
Doctor Who: Remembrance of the Daleks

TV Guide, vols. 341, 399, and the seminal 428.

I’ll play.

Parting the Waters by Taylor Branch
The Powers That Be by David Halberstam
The Ornament of the World by Maria Rosa Menocal

I can’t fathom anyone who’d recommend anything of O’Rourke’s after his National Lampoon stuff and maybe–maybe–one or two of his early pieces for Rolling Stone. Currently, he’s employed as an occasional panelist on Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!, probably my least favorite show on that paragon of free-market media, National Public Radio.

As for my trinity of books, why not:

Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace

The Stand, Complete and Uncut, Stephen King

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K Rowling.

Big damn books, they’ll keep you occupied for a while.

Catch-22
VALIS (Phillip K. Dick)
Bareback Mountain (the graphic novelization)

Only one of these will actually change minds, one will destroy minds, and one I wouldn’t mind reading in bed tonight!