Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand

I have not read Ayn Rand before. Going to school in northern California, I heard a lot of positive things about her work. It is generally agreed that Atlas Shrugged is her masterpiece.

Well, it certainly is a piece. I have to dispute the masterful part though. Some of my disgust probably has to do with the fact that I consumed this work in audio form rather than written. With a book I can start skimming the pages when the author gets into a rut. With an audio book it is a bit more difficult. Especially if you are driving at the time. I listened to an almost 2 hour description of a train ride in the Rockies. A boring description of the mountainsides and the feel of the train on the tracks with next to no dialogue, internal or otherwise.

Which brings up another major problem with this book; the dialogue. The tripe that came out of her characters mouths was mind numbing. Her penchant for having them voice in minute detail the reason they were doing or thinking what they were at every single opportunity made me daydream fondly of steering my car underneath a semi.

This was her last work of fiction. From here she went on to develop her philosophy of objectivism. I have not and do not intend to read these later works but, I trust she did a better job with them. Her transparent and clumsy effort to develop such a philosophy in fiction fell terribly short in my opinion.

More than 1000 pages. I cannot express how grateful I am that this was never assigned reading during my formal education. I forced myself to listen to it through to the end. I couldn't do it all at once and honestly, I only got through the last 25 hours or so because I had no other books on my MP3 player and I was in the middle of a trip to the Philippines.