What do you think so far? How far into it are you?
Not sure what inspiration you can draw out of that, but I'm sure this will put Google one step closer to tying all my online identities together.
Heh, I've given up hope on that front. I suppose you could say "officially" now, since I mentioned earlier the one thing that's an absolute, sure-fire dead giveaway to my real-life identity. <shrug /> Oh well, if somebody can connect the dots of all my various online accounts, more power to 'em.
As for how I like it, thus far I am a little concerned about one point. The characters that I think I'm supposed to like (Dagny and the prince boyfriend) all seem to have gotten where they are by being born into awesome situations. Don't get me wrong - Dagny is a hell of a lot more sympathetic than her brother, for example - but it's hard to look at her as a "self-made woman" when the railroad has been a family business for like 5 generations. I'm hoping Hank Rearden shows up more, because he seems more in line with someone I'd sympathize with.
Other than that, though, I like it quite a bit. It's almost like my own thoughts are echoing back to me. I think it would be interesting to see what Rand would have done had she been alive now and whether the advent of the Internet, for example, would have changed some of the isolation she writes into her characters. Also, Dagny would have been able to track down that missing symphony she heard the train conductor whistling a lot easier.
That's true, but there seems to be a concerted effort throughout the story to tie her - in a sort of spiritual sense - to her grandfather who built the railroad originally. She thinks about him a lot and you get the sense that she is - at times - asking herself "Can I be as good a person as he was, can I be that brave, that strong, etc?"
By the end of the book I felt a lot of sympathy for both Dagny and Rearden.
When I can find 'fun time', I abuse the hell out of my Netflix membership, mostly by watching historical foreign films, documentaries and crime dramas. I am also a fairly skilled bowler, with a 186 average. I am an unskilled but enthusiastic golfer with an average closer to my bowling average than I'd like. I read as well, although my tastes are a bit unusual (last book I read to completion was Vergil's Aeneid in the original Latin - I'm working through Atlas Shrugged at the moment).
Not sure what inspiration you can draw out of that, but I'm sure this will put Google one step closer to tying all my online identities together.