Reddit reviews The Plague

DON'T WORRY CITIZENS!

Alice Miller, "The Drama of the Gifted Child"
> WAHHHHH! BEING SMART IS HARD!

Ta-Nehisi Coates, "Between the World and Me"
>Everyone's a little bit racist

Simone De Beauvoir, "The Ethics of Ambiguity"
>Existentialist navelgazing

Albert Camus, "The Plague"
> More existentialism, but this time people die

Brene Brown, "Daring Greatly"
>What if being some sort of cuck soyboy was actually kinda badass?

Atul Gawande, "Being Mortal"
> Killing them softly, with his loving take on the role of modern medicine in death.

Ali Rivzi, "The Atheist Muslim"
>Being an edgy teenager, but on "difficult" mode

Muhammad Yunus, "A World of Three Zeroes"
>Zero Poverty, Zero Unemployment, and Zero Net Carbon Emissions... also zero sex scenes.

ETA: short, possibly misleading synopses by someone who hasn't read these books.

Existentialism and Human Emotions, by Sartre, is only 96 pages and quite an easy read. {ISBN-13: 978-0806509020} Existentialism and the Philosophical Tradition, [Raymond], gives a broad selection of thinkers throughout history, but it is pricey. {ISBN-13: 978-0132957755} Another approach would be texts that are not strictly philosophical yet present some existential points such as: The Plague, The Stranger, and The Rebel, all by Camus, Nausea by Sartre, Notes From Underground, by Dostoevsky, or Waiting For Godot by Beckett

One. The Drama of a Gifted Child by Alice Miller

Two. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Three. The Ethics of Ambiguity by Simone De Beauvoir

Four. The Plague by Albert Camus

Five. Daring Greatly by Brene Brown

Six. Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

Seven. The Atheist Muslim by Ali Rizvi

Eight. A World of Three Zeros by Muhammad Yunus

edit: numbers didn’t show

For the love of God don't waste your time trying to read Atlas Shrugged. If you have to know why then this wonderful man does an excellent job in tearing the book apart. Essentially, all this woman did was rewrite (a very bad interpretation of) Nietzsche for young adults. So if you're interested in the ideas that this women brings up then you're much better off just going straight to the source and cutting out the middle hag. I would suggest starting with: The Genealogy of Morals as being in my opinion his best book.

Rand not only cribs Nietzsche she also completely mis-interprets what his philosophy (or what philosophy in general, for that matter) is about and just sprouts a bunch of nonsensical nonsense that is mainly a justification for acting like a selfish prick because she is in the business of peddling her ideas to the elite and the cult that has sprung up around her. For someone who is philosophically informed she is actually quite painful to read because she is just plain wrong in a number of key areas and also engages in what are just bad argumentative techniques, E.G., the majority of the book is just her erecting straw men to be later knocked down. It is akin to watching CSI if you know even the slightest thing about computers or police procedure.

If you what to read something along the lines of philosophical fiction then I can't recommend Albert Camus enough especially The Plague, although all his books are absolutely phenomenal.