Atlas Shrugged

I wanted to read this book to know what everybody is talking about. Now I know. It's not a bad book. The story is interesting, I like Dagny and Francisco, and I like the joy of achievement, ideas, goals, dreams and aspirations. I like people who are better than everyone else. I like a strong female lead. (Now, that that was kind of spoiled by the fact that she was practically the only woman to be mentioned, and her lovers treated her pretty awfully.)
I was actually positively surprised by this book. But the ideology part of it, the propaganda part is so obvious, so crude, so exaggerated... so obviously a caricature and... what's the word... so beyond reality it is hard to understand how anyone could take this seriously. Someone said it's “truly prophetic”. Seriously. There are people out there who believe to be intelligent, rational, realistic people who think Ayn Rand makes sense. 8-{ Ridiculous.

So... this is a story of Dagny Taggart who wants to be a railway tycoon and is.
She falls in love with three different guys, each better looking and more stoic than the other, until she finally falls in love with the third, most good looking, most stoic of everyone in the existence of universe. Like a Greek God with golden, auburn or something hair. Ayn doesn't seem to be able to decide. Let's say gold, it sounds so rich. You know, Superman was Man of Steel, Doc Savage Man of Bronze, so John Galt was Man of Gold.
Ayn sets her story in a future USA (like now - 2005-2015), though it was written 1957, and reads like a pulp fiction magazine written in the 30s. I keep seeing Dagny in 30s evening gowns as I read this, and art deco environment and film noir atmosphere. It's a socialist humanist paradise, even though it's clearly a description of how Ayn Rand experienced Soviet Russia back in 1917-1920, because it's not a socialist humanist paradise, it's a caricature of it, a capitalist hell.

It was impossible to me to read this book without thinking about Objectivism and the... er... people who idolize Ayn Rand. I can say I don't have high regard on any of these people. I can understand the lure of Ayn Rand's heroes and heroines, but I think people should be able to actually understand how political systems, politics, society and ideologies actually work, and Ayn Rand doesn't show any sign of that she does. I get the feeling I get when I read Richard Dawkins's God Delusion and listen to all his fans babbling mindlessly and blindly about things they don't know anything about except what Richard Dawkins said, and he didn't know much he either. I get the feeling like when looking at those inane stories about a Christian student who puts a stupid science teacher in place. Ayn Rand's villains are sock puppets who do exactly what Ayn wants them to do, are exactly as stupid, say exactly what she wants them to say, react exactly as she needs them to react. I don't think there are any real people who would actually behave like that, but - who cares about REAL people? They don't fit the agenda of these people. And - whereas this is OK in a book (not good, but OK because it's just a story), it's incredibly stupid to believe real live human beings are like that.

What irritated me a lot was the constant secrecy. “You aren't ready yet”.
The mind-reading. Everybody, especially the heroes, knew exactly what everyone else was thinking, and they communicated with glances.

“Dagny noticed that they looked at each other as if their glance were the handshake of a bond too firm to require any statement. Rearden saw her watching them— and the faintest contraction of his eyes was like a smile of sanction, as if his glance were repeating to her the message he had sent her from the valley. “