Atlas Shrugged May Have to be the Next Book I Read

Alright, let me say something first. I don't read things like the "classics" very often in my free time. It's just not my sort of thing, nor is it really my cup of tea to say the least. As a matter of fact, I think that the only classic literature I've read in my life was a direct result of being required to do so for some sort of class in high school or college.

Except one. The Fountainhead  by Ayn Rand.

When I first met my wife, we went on five dates in six nights the week before winter break at BYU. On one of the last dates that week we went to the local Barnes & Noble bookstore because she wanted to show me some book known as the The Color Code and I needed to pick up something to read during the break while I was at home.

Long story short, I thought I would be pretty smooth and told her as we walked in to go get me a copy of a favorite book of hers. She did, and I bought it along with the book I was there for, promising to read it over the break so we could talk about it when I got back. In my mind it was a pretty slick way of setting myself up for another date when we both got back to campus.

The Fountainhead was pretty good. It's long as hell, but the story was pretty good, and I liked a couple of the characters a lot. Blah, blah, blah, we wound up married. Cool, eh?

Anyways, a few days ago, my wife and I went to the Redbox down the road and grabbed the Atlas Shrugged movie to watch. It's her favorite book of all time, hands down, and she was intrigued to see how the low-budget film that was released in 2011 stacked up as far as character depiction and so forth. I, having absolutely no clue what the book was about except that it involved trains in some fashion, had no sort of preconceived notions as to what was going to happen.



Yeah... shouldn't have watched that movie.

No, the movie wasn't horrible. As a matter of fact, as someone who had never read the book or had any idea what the story was about I was quite intrigued and enjoyed it far more than I was expecting to. The problem lies entirely in the fact that now I'm obsessing over two things:

Who the hell is John Galt?
What the hell does he have to do with Atlantis?

I'm not kidding. I've thought about it every single day since we watched that movie, and if I hadn't just started reading Fate of the Jedi: Conviction the day before I probably would have downloaded Atlas Shrugged to my Kindle immediately that evening. For all I know, the movie is completely off-track from the actual book. I won't allow my wife to tell me either way as I have a burning desire to discover for myself.

As a result, I did have plans to read the other Fate of the Jedi books and then finish the rest of the Millenium series books, but now those plans may have to change. My only hesitation is that Atlas Shrugged is long, and I worry I may lose myself in it if it really does have anything to do with Atlantis for some reason.

My wife should know better than to expose me to these things.