Ayn Rand

Spoiler Alert.  You might not want to read this if you have not read Atlas Shrugged or the Fountainhead.

I read Atlas Shrugged about 6 months ago at the suggestion of Juan.  It instantly became one of my most favorite books of all time.  I do not think a fiction book has so deeply and convincingly described some of the ideals that I hold truest to my core beliefs.  I have never seen an author wrap up the whole context of her book in one sentence as Rand does when Dagney finally says: 

"I swear -- by my life and my love of it -- that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."

 

I just finished the Fountainhead last night.  I found it as enjoyable as Atlas Shrugged although I have some trouble with the portrayal of Dominque Francon and her first time with Roark.  I understand it, but it might have been a little to overboard.  Just as in Atlas Shrugged, Rand seems to sum up the entire book with Roark's speech to Peter Keating:

"Peter, before you can do things for other people, you must be the kind of man who can get things done.  But to get things done, you must love the doing, not the secondary consequences.  The work, not the people.  Your own action, not any possible object of you charity.  I'll be glad if people who need it find a better manner of living in a house I designed.  But that's not the motive of my work.  Nor my reason, Nor my reward."

I will probably start on Ayn Rand's the Virtue of Selfishness in the next couple of weeks.