Random Thoughts

today i started reading Ayn Rand's "Atlus Shrugged". it is her second most famous work (the most famous one being The Fountainhead), and the author herself has regarded the book as her magnum opus. the book also is quite thick, there are more than 850 pages in it.

Reading Ayn Rand is always a difficult exercise. after reading books like "how to read better and faster", preparing for CAT exams, and reading thousands of pages of course casemats in the past one year, my eyes have got used to scanning through the content of a page and knowing the relevant details as soon as possible. this technique is quite useful while reading fiction works of current maintstream authors like Michael Crichton (author of the famous book Jurassic Park) and John Grisham (blockbuster movie The Runaway Jury was made after his book). they give lots of irrelevant details in their books, there are many short stories which run parallel to the main one, and you have got to differentiate between them if you want to finish the book in reasonable time.

But you can't do that with Ayn Rand. using such a technique in her books will be like replacing the ferry in a zoo with a bullet train. of course you will finish the trip faster, but it is not the destination you are after. her stories move very slowly, and you always know what will happen at the end. the true pleasure lies in the small details, and in the graphic scenes of the seemingly irrelevant incidents. in this sense it is like having sex. or like raising children. or for that matter, like preparing for exams.