I, like many others I see, came across this message board on accident. But I am very glad nevertheless. I am 21, a resident of California and currently reading Atlas Shrugged. It is something I have been meaning to do for a few years but never read past the first few chapters until I pushed my self one day and could not put it down from that moment on.
It is a wonderful book that has blown my expectations away so far. I don’t know much about Ayn Rand or her philosophy, but I am eager to come back here and learn and discuss as soon as I finish the book!
I, like many others I see, came across this message board on accident. But I am very glad nevertheless. I am 21, a resident of California and currently reading Atlas Shrugged. It is something I have been meaning to do for a few years but never read past the first few chapters until I pushed my self one day and could not put it down from that moment on.
It is a wonderful book that has blown my expectations away so far. I don’t know much about Ayn Rand or her philosophy, but I am eager to come back here and learn and discuss as soon as I finish the book!
with much anticipation,
Majestic Fool
I do not know you well-enough to know if you are majestic, but based on what you wrote above you are certainly no fool!
Your story is very similar to mine. I had known about Ayn Rand for many years, but her ideas didn’t really interest me that much. (I used to think “Ethical Egoism? Doesn’t sound like a very interesting, unique philosophy to me.”) But then, when I was 21, I met an objectivist who convinced me to try Atlas Shrugged. The first chapter didn’t interest me much; I wasn’t familiar with Rand’s literary style, so I wasn’t immediately aware of the archetypes that Dagny and James Taggart were supposed to represent, and their argument over the Mexican railroad (name?) didn’t seem all that exciting. But then came chapter two, the introduction to Hank Rearden, and I fell in love with him immediately. (Of course, when I first met his family, I wasn’t immediately aware that Lillian was an evil character, and I felt a bit sad that she and Hank weren’t getting along well. I eventually got over that.)
My advice to you:
If you get a little bored in the middle of “This is John Galt speaking,” don’t be afraid to just skim it on the first reading, finish the book, and then go back and read it thoroughly.
Get to FH (Fountainhead) soon after AS: you’ll *love* Howard Roark, possibly more so than any of the AS characters (which is the case with me.)
As for the other novels, Anthem is great for a short read (1984 with a happy ending), but WTL is a bit depressing (albeit with an interesting ending), so don’t read it with the expectation that it will be an uplifting novel, as the rest were.
