I hate getting books for Christmas in general because I’m such a mood reader, and I’ve plastered a fake smile on my face many a time and repeated internally ‘Its the thought that counts.’ as I unwrap a book I will not read.
But the worst one by far, given to me by my own Mother , who I know loves me, when I was fourteen years old! was >!Men are from Mars Women are from Venus.!< I am sitting there horrified thinking what is she trying to tell me? As my sisters are flat on the floor laughing to the point of puking. We eventually came to the conclusion she just saw an attractive cover on a bestseller table and grabbed it. Love to know your terrible gift stories.
My abuelita used to get me the new Bill O’Reilly book of the year. She really didn’t mean any harm, she’s just a very old school catholic Mexican lady who just accepted whatever she’s told (by the church usually) to accept. She knew I was interested in “politics” and thought I might find them interesting. Unfortunately, the politics I was/am interested in are leftist literature like Marx, Engels, Bakunin, etc among myriad others. Eventually, she started watching Colbert and thought he was so funny and silly (I’m still not sure if she realized it was satire) she started getting me his books. I had a lot of fun reading those. But ultimately, my abuelita is the best and she could get me a pile of shit for Christmas and I wouldn’t love her any less.
Oh, and onetime my fascist uncle got me Atlas Shrugged unironically…that one was pretty bad too.
What a sweet lady. I’d forgive her, but not my MIL. She hates that I’m progressive. 😂
I had an ex-girlfriend that keep giving me Ayn Rand to read. She said how they changed the way she looked at the world. In retrospect I’m glad that relationship ended.
Was one of those books a short little sucker called Anthem? I had to read that in high school and I guess you could say it changed how I looked at the world. I was imaginating triplets joined at the head before I finally figured out everybody was using the royal we (as in Queen Victoria’s classic statement “We are not amused”). Had to work WAY too hard to get that little piece of information and I’ve never read Ayn Rand again. (In fact, when somebody asked me about that book years after graduation, I had to look on the fiction shelves at the library and go through all the Ayn Rand books they had because I’d blocked the damn title out of my brain.)
As far as I’m concerned, the only good thing to come out of “Anthem” is that it inspired the story on Side 1 of Rush’s ‘2112’ album.
what’s abuelita? And I don’t want to know.