Atlas Shrugged - Round 2

It was over two years ago when I first read Atlas and it seems that my life has since been in an ever accelerating dive into Objectivism. It has been an interesting revolution in my life that, I'm sure as some of you know, has met with some interesting bumps along the way. Overall though, I am a much happier person who is standing on much more solid moral ground than I was before.

Due to this, I decided that I should read some new Rand and re-read the two that I had read before. Already this year I have put away "We The Living", "The Fountainhead", and just finished last weekend "Atlas Shrugged". It is amazing how much more I got out of these books now than I did before.

Atlas is fantastic and I would recommend it to anyone despite it's lengthy size. I remembered most of the plot as I was cruising through it but specific scenes and the speeches struck new chords. I am not usually an "emotional" person (by that I mean that I DO HAVE emotions, lots of them, but I usually don't reach the stage of crying very often), however, some scenes in Atlas really brought me to tears. (i.e. when Dagny asks for a volunteer crew to run the first train on the "suicidal" John Galt Line and every engineer and fireman puts their names in...damn that was good! Or, when Dagny overhears Rearden's wife insulting the bracelet he made her out of Rearden Steel at the cocktail party, then Dagny walks up and trades her diamond braclet for the steel one...I was cheering out loud at that point!)

I only have one complaint about my second experience with Atlas...I re-read it too soon. I am a believer that you have to separate times of reading and re-reading by at least three years so that you have time to grow, mature, and slowly digest what you know about the book. It also helps if you forget a little bit of the plot details. I should have waited another year, but I just couldn't resist.

I have a few favorite passages that are of current relevance that I will post on shortly... stay tuned.