Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

This book will peak your interest if you like one of the following: anything to do with trains, the difficulties of running your own business, strong female main characters, political unrest to due an overly strict government, or you just like suffering through 1,000+ page books for no apparent reason.  About 2/3rds of the way through the book, I realized that no one was actually going to read this book based on my review, and I almost gave up on it.  I think I finished it just to say I did it and less out of enjoyment for the book itself.  As a matter of fact, I struggled through a lot of this book.  I told my mom that the author must have suffered from writer's flood versus writer's block.  You could have cut out 600 pages of the book and it still would have made sense.  I'll still give you a brief overview of the story just in case in interests some poor soul out there who wants to read it.

Dagny Taggart, is the Vice President of Taggart Transcontinental.  This is a family run railroad business.  Taggart Transcontinental starts to have difficulty as more and more regulations are being implemented by the government.  The political figures make these regulations with intentions to hurt successful companies while saying they are trying to level the playing field for all businesses.  In an effort to save her railway, Dagny works with Hank Reardon, of Reardon Metals, to create a new, cost effective railroad with a new metal alloy Reardon created.  As Dagny and Hank continue to work together, the government starts to crumble the entire industrial backbone of the country.  Many of Dagny's supporters and friends, who are also business owners, are disappearing into thin air to save themselves.  Dagny is on a mission to find out why her friends are disappearing, as she knows she will most likely be approached at some point about whatever it is that makes them leave.  Will she be able to save Taggart Transcontinental?

It is a very well written book.  Just too long winded for the every day causal reader.  I had to put post-it tabs in my book to make sure I was staying on task and meeting my quotas for the week.  In Section Three of the book, the author changes course entirely - it is where you learn about all of Dagny's disappearing friends - it suddenly becomes exciting again, but I felt like the excitement was short lived.  And I thought the resolution to the book was so-so.

In closing, if you are a die-hard lover of books, and you are looking for a ridiculous challenge... try reading the Game of Thrones book series!  Just kidding.  But really...  You may love "Atlas Shrugged", you may hate it, you may fizzle in and out of it like I did, but at least you can appreciate the time and effort Ayn Rand took to write this monster of a novel.