Having played a number of games that make reference to Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, I decided that it would be a good idea to actually read the book that has served as some sort of inspiration for those games. This book is also seems to be a book that has won critical acclaim, so it seemed like a good idea to read it.  Thus I put this book on my Overdrive account (public library audiobooks) and waited for it to become available for download.

One day, I get an email notification that the audiobook is ready to download, so I fire-up my Overdrive app on my iPod touch and download the book...all 60+ hours of it!  This is by far the longest book I have ever attempted to listen to. Well, in the two week loan that I had the book for I only managed to listen to about 12 to 14 hours, or about 20% of the book.  I discovered that if you don't close your overdrive application, even though your book has expired, it won't register until you close it and open it up again. I used this trick to squeeze out a couple more hours of listening. I  initially re-requested the book, but I have decided to not finish it because the book is really non-readable.  It's supposed to be a masterpiece, but the writing is horrible. It's like a high school student wrote it! The basic story is intriguing, I will admit to that, but the execution is flawed beyond belief. In addition to the writing being a bit flat, as disappointing as flat soda, the characters also fail to impress, and are self-contradicting, to the point where one must do a double take.

For an example of this one doesn't have to look farther than the protagonist, Dagny. Dagny is portrayed as a strong woman, breaking the stereotypes and taking control of her father's rail road company even though there is a male heir. She is obviously portrayed as someone who has the balls and the business acumen to turn around an ailing business; but then she becomes a toy for Francisco D'Anconia and Hank Rearden, going from one man to another, essentially becoming their possession and "submitting to their will as women should" (this probably isn't verbatim but I am sure I heard it in the audiobook!).  What the hell happened to the strong and dynamic woman? According to wikipedia, Dagny also had a third lover, but I didn't get that far in the book.

In addition to non-sensical characters, bad writing, and a length that is not warranted, this book also suffers from going back and forth between a dystopian future genre of a novel (a genre which I like), and that of a Harlequin novel.  Perhaps Atlas in the picture above should have the head of Fabio...

I was considering reading the Fountainhead instead, perhaps Ayn Rand could be redeemed, but considering that Atlas Shrugged is considered her magnum opus, I don't know if it's worth wasting my time.  In the end, it seems like Atlas Shrugged is a complete #fail.

What do you think? Have you read it? When did you read it and what did you think?