The Book: Anthem, by Ayn Rand

The Story: This is a dystopian story about a world where the word “I” has been entirely eliminated.  Even the thought of individuality is gone and everyone goes about pretty much like drones.

One kid, Equality ###, can see the craziness in this and realizes that something is wrong, but he just can’t put his finger on it.  When he meets a girl who also has a spark in her eye, they start to illegally see each other and discuss ideas.

When they decide to run away, they make a discovery that pretty much blows their minds.

What I Thought: This was another reread for me.  I have just kind of hit a wall and feel a little too overwhelmed to take on a new story.  I read this in high school, after having read The Fountainhead and I thought it was really good.

With Hunger Games and a dozen other dystopian YA novels coming out recently, the ideas here don’t seem as shocking as they did the first time I read it.

Still, pretty good stuff.  I love the tension you start to feel for the main character.  You know that he’s on to something but the possibility of him figuring it out just seems so bleak.  The innocence in his relationship with the girl with golden hair is kind of wonderful and refreshing. And the fact that their salvation comes from books?  Awesome.

That being said, this is not one of my faves.  As in all of Ayn Rand’s books, there are all these philosophical ideas brought up that I just don’t agree with.  The last quarter of this book kind of goes into a philosophical rant, but I didn’t think that it really detracted from the story itself. The real downfall here was just the lack of… umph.  The characters were pretty flat, their world was undeveloped and unexplained and there just isn’t much connection made here.

I really, really enjoy dystopian books and I would have to say of that genre, this isn’t the worst or the best.  It’s just somewhere in the middle.

Conclusion: Not super remarkable, but a great place to start if Ayn Rand’s giant books are too much for ya.  If all you’re looking for is some good dystopian fun, 1984 or Brave New World may be a better way to turn.

Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand

I know that this seems like a weird flashback, especially since I usually focus on books I read when I was really young, but this one has been on my mind lately and I thought I’d share.

A couple years after I graduated high school and right before I started college, I worked at the Post Office for a few months.  It was a third shift job and I was basically just doing a job a monkey could do.  All night I was lifting mail into and out of machines.  It was the most tedious, brainless job I’ve ever had to do.  It was horrible.  During that same time, I bought a copy of Atlas Shrugged because I loved The Fountainhead and because it was only 8 dollars and was like 1,500 pages.  More bang for your buck, ya know?

Every night, in the break room I would sit down with this giant book with all this serious philosophy and  all these confusing plot lines and I would put my brain to work.  I loved it.  I loved the stories, the characters, the ideas presented… I even loved the teeny tiny print and the lack of margins.

I know that this seems like a strange piece of escapist literature, but that is what it was for me.  I’d read 10 or 15 pages during my break or on my lunch and then I’d have something for my brain to chew on for the next few hours while I slung mail around.

I’ve thought a lot of times about re-reading this because I loved it so much when I read it the first time, but I’m pretty sure that it would be a very different experience this time around.

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The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand

Today I was really going back and forth between doing Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and The Fountainhead. Quite the extremes, huh? I decided to save Chicka Chicka Boom Boom for another day, so here we go.

When I was in high school, I had one of the greatest English teachers of all time.  She dressed up like Romeo, cried during To Kill a Mockingbird, laughed at our jokes and genuinely enjoyed us, and it showed.  I had her for freshman english, and again in later grades for speech and humanities.  It was during one of these later classes that she gave me info on a scholarship where you had to read The Fountainhead and then write something about it.  She said that it was a harder book, but she knew I loved to read and she really thought that I could do it.

So I did.  And I loved it.  Maybe part of that love was that it was a tough book and it made me think.  Up to that point, I had read very few novels that weren’t “just” novels.  A book that teaches/shows an entire new philosophy?  This was a wholly new thing for me.  I loved all the little descriptive details and the seriously unlikeable characters.

I remember the scene where Dominique buys the expensive statue that she loves, only to bring it home and crash it down the stairs.  She said that she knew that no one else could appreciate its beauty like she did so she didn’t want anyone else to even see it.  I must have read this thirty times.  For some reason that just rang true to me, and in my copy it’s dog-earred.  I come back to it over and over.

The whole book blew me away.  I remember reporting back to my teacher and letting her know that not only did I finish it, but I liked it.  She was totally shocked and wrote down a whole list of books for me to read.  Some of my favorite books of all time have come from that list.

I never did do the scholarship writing thing.  I’m not always a finisher.  But I have read all of Ayn Rand’s books.  For me, this one always stands out, but I’m pretty sure it has a lot to do with who gave it to me and the time in my life that I read it.

To participate in Flashback Friday, head over here.  After you post your flashback, come back here and post a link in the comments so everyone can read it!