Recently a Very Dear GR Friend (VDF for short) asked me the following question: 
 VDF: By the way, I'm very very curious. What I know of your views would not have made me think that you would have rated Atlas Shrugged so highly. What was it about the book that made you feel so highly about it? 
 This is an excerpt from my response. You'll need to understand my system of Ratings/Review as well. Which I'm now violating by writing this: 
 GNF: I read Ayn Rand about a decade or more ago and I remember going around in a daze for weeks afterward - it just appeals to the anarchist in me, you see, at the visceral level: DOWN WITH THE EBEL STATE! - as well as feeling totally dicked off with the love story garbage, because for me it got in the way of the REAL STUFF: ANARCHY!!!! 
 Ahem. I was more impressionable in those days. If you made me read her again, would I have exactly the same reaction? I love hard work. Independence. I'm the right reader for what I interpreted as being her political message, although I know that her politial message isn't necessarily what I interpreted. 
 ...... 
 Oh, and I just thought of Rand again. Because Atlas Shrugged is supposed to be a dystopia, right? When I read it, I never even thought about that. I just thought about the freedom to work and produce without institutional strangling. I didn't even get the dystopic stuff (ie America as the last bastion of a global economy crashing down (if that is even what it is!) - cue cultural blind spot - in fact, she pissed me off for bagging out Europe the whole time, since I think the EU is probably more compassionate at the community level than the US), because the Valley just sounded great - wow, I want to go there and work!!! And by working hard and being compassionate to others and giving people the opportunity to be productive in a way personally satisfying the Valley society will be like that. No deadwood government smothering the individual's drive to create. That's predominantly all I took away from it. Which is of course completely loopy if you take Ayn Rand's personal circumstances into account. In the interim, I've read briefly about her and I think she suffers a bit of intellectual/emotional dishonesty too. But I didn't know anything about Rand when I read her book, hence the emotional 'starred' response. 
 ****** 
 So there you have it. No analysis of the prose. Not even understanding of Rand's message - in fact, as you've guessed, most of it flew right over my head. I'd have to go back and read it to know whether what I took out of it reflects the prevailing view as to what her philosophy and politics were. And I would have to read the prevailing view. First. 
 Dedicated to my VDF.