Via email from The Atlas Society:
I read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged about my Freshman year of high school. With that one book, second only to Robert Heinlein, she made a very deep, life-long impression on me.
It was between my Junior and Senior years of high school I read my first Heinlein book, Stranger in a Strange Land. During college I read most of Heinlein’s books and many of his short stories. I still remember the vehicle I was driving and where on 116th NE in Bellevue I was when I heard on the radio that Robert Heinlein had died.
It was later when I was in my late 20’s through mid 30’s that I read more of Rand. I didn’t know her other works existed until they were pointed out to me by Susan K. I am still grateful for Susan’s guidance with Rand and George H. Smith’s Atheism: The Case Against God.
Over the years I have read all Rand’s books and some of her essays and scholarly papers. Her works still resonate with me. My one big quibble with her is what she apparently believed is the perfect sexual relationship between women and men is repugnant to me. I see it as something closer to rape than a respectful relationship between equals.
I hope her works continue to be an inspiration and philosophical guideposts for people everywhere.
The Fountainhead became a major movie. And much more recently, a small movie maker managed to do a decent job of turning Atlas Shrugged into a movie trilogy. You can tell it was done on a shoestring budget, but the story comes through pretty well even so. One consequence of the shoestring is that some of the characters are played by different actors in the 3 parts.
Someone recommended Terry Goodkind’s “Sword of Truth” to me in high school and I grudgingly read the first book. I ended up hating it, but my friend was so insistent that I read the second book that I forced myself to start the sequel – mostly so I could tell my friend his taste in books was garbage. I’m glad I held on because “The Stone of Tears” was excellent and so were several of the books to follow. I couldn’t finish the series because it felt tedious eventually, but the first several books – following “The Wizard’s First Rule” – were well worth the read.
I could have done without the BDSM elements in some of the books, but Mr. Goodkind introduced themes about morality, freedom, and taking a stand against tyranny and oppression that have resonated with me since II was 17 years old. Some of the books he wrote over 25 years ago felt like an allegory written specifically for our society as we descended into full-blown wokism over the decade.
I usually don’t go for fantasy books. But I have downloaded the first book in this series from Audible.
Thank you.