• • Are Apps The Future of Book Publishing? 
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Atlas Shrugged  | One of the things about the e-book market right now is that there are a variety of experiences. Perhaps the type of e-book app that will seem most familiar to people would be something along the lines of Penguin’s Amplified Edition of Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged. This edition, which is purchased as an iPad app, features things like actual manuscript pages, the ability to share quotes on social media, and audio clips of Ayn Rand on various topics.      View blog reactions

• • Stross and Doctorow Collaborate on Singularity Novel 
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Atlas Shrugged  | Science Fiction writers Charles Stross and Cory Doctorow have announced that they’ve collaborated on a novel, titled Rapture of the Nerds, due out next September. On his website, Charles Stross discusses a few details. Let me reassure you that “The Rapture of the Nerds” is not an authorized sequel to “Atlas Shrugged” (although the uploaded AI ghost of Ayn Rand makes a cameo appearance).”      View blog reactions

• The Weekly E-Book Reading List 
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The gem of [Superheroes: The Best of Philosophy and Pop Culture] was the essay “Does Peter Parker Have a Good Life?” by Neil Mussett, which explores the question of the Meaning of Life in the context of Spider-Man, using viewpoints from the secular humanist Paul Kurtz, Objectivist Ayn Rand, Stoic Epictetus, Psychologist Viktor Frankl and Saint Thomas Aquinas.      View blog reactions

• • “Who Is John Galt?” Try the App to Find Out 
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Atlas Shrugged  | In a step up from a typical e-book, Penguin has announced a new iPad app – an “amplified edition” of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. According to their website, the app includes the ability to share quotes from the book via social media. It also has some enhanced features – think DVD extras. These include photos of original manuscript pages, annotations, videos and audio of Ayn Rand discussing the book and her philosophy, as well as quizzes, a discussion guide, and internal search capability.      View blog reactions

• • The Weekly E-Reading List 
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Egoism  |Image  | Finished in the Past Week: Why Ayn Rand is Wrong (And Why It Matters) by Levi Asher. Alex’s Review: I ended up being pretty disappointed by this book. The copy on the book (not to mention the title) promise a pretty unflinching look at Ayn Rand’s ideas. So I was surprised to find that there was barely any engagement with Rand at all. Instead, the author used Rand as a stepping stone for his own ideas and opinions on ethics and egoism generally. Which was fine, I suppose, but there wasn’t much innovative there, and apart from a handful of quotes, Asher’s ideas had very little to do with Ayn Rand’s views on ethics. That’s too bad. Ayn Rand deserves better.      View blog reactions

• • • The Weekly E-Reading List 
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Egoism  | Currently Reading: Why Ayn Rand is Wrong (And Why It Matters) by Levi Asher. [....] Alex’s Initial Impressions: I’ve actually only barely started reading this, but it caught my eye because of its ambition. There are very few critical works of Ayn Rand out there, which I think is a shame because she is very influential in today’s culture. I’m interested to read Mr. Asher’s take on her thinking. As someone who used to consider himself a fellow traveler with Objectivists, I’m curious to see if his thinking is close to mine or entirely different.      View blog reactions

• • The Ayn Rand generation? 
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Alan Jacobs discusses the book Souls In Transition, a book that surveys and catalogs the spiritual views of 18-23 year olds. He highlights a passage that I find interesting: “The majority of those interviewed stated . . . that nobody has any natural or general responsibility or obligation to help other people. [....]” [....] When I was 18-23, I fully shared those views about my obligation to others (or lack thereof) and would have been clapping my hands at this survey right along with the zombie Ayn Rand. When you’re young and semi-independent in college, it’s easy to lose track of the world around you and become isolated from the harsh reality that bad things happen and we have to help each other out to make it through. But then you graduate from college and you grow up. If a follow-up ten years from now shows that a majority of this generation of 18-23 year olds still believes that they don’t have to help other people, well, then there might be a cause for worry.      View blog reactions