What does it mean that so many faculty members at the United States Naval Academy have recommended Ayn Rand’s work on the “Reading List For Life?”
The Naval Academy’s Reading List for Life
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Change
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Hatchet Job Prize
Turns out Americans aren’t the only ones who adore snark. The novelist and critic Adam Mars-Jones has won the first Hatchet Job prize from the British website Omnivore for his blistering takedown of Michael Cunningham’s latest novel, By Nightfall. Mars-Jones beat out Geoff Dyer’s slam of Booker Prize winner Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending. “It isn’t terrible,” Dyer wrote, “it’s just so…average.”
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Theo Decker’s Pinterest
Keeping track of the art mentioned in Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch is almost as difficult as keeping track of Boris. Fortunately, Laura Petelle made a Pinterest board of all the art in the novel, complete with excerpts. Start reading from the bottom up, and beware of spoilers.
Emily Gould’s Favorite Memoirs
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I only counted three I think. I actually found the lists to be surprisingly ecumenical. There were only a handful that were packed with military histories.
I count five professors total, the majority of whom are in mathematics or engineering. I think the list overall is pretty interesting, though.
I’m not surprised by the Randian representation within math/engineering. As an engineer myself, I tend to observe more Randians within my profession than in the general population. A desire for seeing the world in black and white and for logical actors, I guess.
I’m amazed that someone could go through that whole page and decide to fixate on the Ayn Rand entries.