What book did you start to read, didn't like, and quit?

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

31. Me too

It is said that Atlas Shrugged is the book about which Dorothy Parker said, "This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force."

I started to read Rand's Virtue of Selfishness, but on the second or third page, she gives a straw man definition of "altruism". She said that the altruist believes that an act which helps others is good, an act which helps the altruist is bad. An actual altruist would say that an act which helps him- or herself and does not harm others is at worst morally neutral, and may well be good. (And her statement about helping others being good is simplistic to the point of absurdity.) Since she starts off with a logical fallacy, I saw no reason to continue reading. She is obviously a crap philosopher.

After all, there are two possibilities:

Either she did not know that what she was saying was untrue, in which case she is a fool and not worth bothering with.

If she knew that what she was false, but said it anyway, she is a knave and not worth bothering with.