The Fountainhead, All Wet?

This weekend I finally finished reading The Fountainhead, the famous book by Ayn Rand that almost everyone else in the country read long ago, before me, and "LOVE love love love love loved" it.

The book is 800 long pages, and I labored through it for about a month, including a week haitus when I couldn't take it anymore, and finally found some chapters at the very end that captivated me enough to say I couldn't put the book down (maybe 50 pages, total).

I generally don't go around trash-talking about books that are commonly accepted as wonderful, but I honestly need to call this an overrated novel. Maybe it's because I became predisposed to hating it because so many random strangers on public transit insisted on interrupting me to mention how much they love the book. Maybe it's because everyone says the exact same thing and has the exact same opinions about the book, which, ironically enough, seems to contradict what Ms. Rand so thoroughly and relentlessly promotes. Maybe it's because I don't personally have the patience for a repetitive, slow-moving soap opera with characters I can't quite care about.

This isn't to say that I don't find the writing style to be eloquent, or that I lack appreciation for the ideal presented. I think the concept of selfishness for the greater good is fascinating, as do lovers of Ayn Rand works. Anyone who has ever been made to feel inadequate would logically feel this way. I don't discredit the effort to create such a lengthy, epic tale, but I feel like a few of the hours spent reading this would have been better spent elsewhere.

And you wonder what I'm doing instead of blogging. ;)