Flame — HabitableZone

Flame » in reply to Save the trees!

Heh...thought you meant the Ayn Rand books.
TB — (archived)

Martha, if you're going to read Rand, start with the Fountainhead. While the motivations are not always clear on the secondary characters, they're more human and less archetypical than the characters in "Atlas Shrugged." The latter is almost allegorical, like an old-style "Pilgrim's Progress" kind of thing where human characteristics are concentrated deliberately and often unrealistically in specific characters. As with such stories, heroes have few flaws, and villains have few virtues. Falls from grace are common, and redemptions few and far between.

However, "Atlas Shrugged" is probably the best presentation of Ayn Rand's philosophy in fictional form. The plot is interesting enough, and strong enough to carry you past the character's tendencies to make long-winded speeches on a particular philosophical item. If anyone has the discipline to plow through John Galt's famous speech without skipping a bit to see what happens in the end, I have yet to meet them.

Her non-fiction is good, too, with the books usually collecting essays from her newsletters or journals.

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