Well, since the topic is "Ayn Rand" and not "Copyright Infringement" I've got to chime in about
Atlas Shrugged. I'm almost 500 pages into what is an 1179-page tome on my Sony PRS-505, and I've been wanting to quit each time I finish a chapter. Honestly I've never read such dry prose, stilted dialog - nobody really talks like the monologues the main characters constantly recite to each other, do they? - nor endured such rigid, unchanging characters.
Each of the "good guys" might as well be wearing the white hats, and the bad guys wearing black ones; there's just no nuance at all in these cardboard cutouts! It seems like this lumbering beast of a novel could've been distilled into about 50 or even 100 interesting pages, novella-style, without missing any of the main plot points I've hit so far in nearly the 500 pages I've waded through.
On a slightly more positive note, the flashback sequence where Dagny Taggart is remembering her childhood friendship with Fransciso and Eddie (Willers) provided a fairly satisfying back-story when it was interjected in main storyline. And I can't argue that plot elements fail to build into a coherent, interwoven story - they do work well together. It's just that the whole experience feels as dry as dust to me.
If there are any Rand fans out there I'd love to know what I'm missing - and don't be afraid of the ad hominem attack either, I can take it
