So I finally finished Atlas Shrugged! What can I say about this epic book. It's about 1100 pages long, but it reads like a mystery novel, so it goes by quicker than, say, the 1100 pages of War and Peace. Also, so much changes and happens in the book, I'm not even sure how they made a movie of it. I'm guessing they removed a lot, which makes me sad because there are so many good parts. 
 What were my favorite parts? I loved the people in the novel. Dagny Taggart is my favorite, she is the vice-president of a very successful train industry that is slowly going down the drain due to her brother. While I was reading this book, I was in awe at how Dagny could figure her way out of any situation, battling against all odds, so casually and naturally. I loved how no matter what punches were thrown her way, she always kept her calm, where most people would be livid and throwing a fit. Lillian Rearden was one of my favorites for the majority of the novel. She is Hank Rearden's wife, Hank being a famous steel industrialist who invents a new type of light, inexpensive alloy that revolutionalizes modern industry. Lillian is fabulous; she is snarky and always speaks her mind. She has Hank on a leash through most of it, and she is a delight to read. She becomes depraved much later on, which completely destroys her character. In a way, Atlas Shrugged is a big soap opera mess. 
 There comes a point in the novel I can't stand, however. Basically, Dagny and Hank Rearden have an affair, which in itself wouldn't bother me, but their affair is really dysfunctional. Rearden is abusive to her, physically in bed at times, and treating her like some sort of material object that can be played and toyed with without worry of hurting her emotions. And the scary part of it is that she likes it. I was repulsed, and was hoping to God that it didn't continue, because if the whole novel played out like that I wouldn't be able to read it. I think the worst part of it was that I highly respected Hank and Dagny. They build their magnificent railway through Colorado despite everyone being against them, but then suddenly they turn into this sado-masochistic relationship based on sex, domination, and what felt like violation to me, but positive sensation to Dagny. It's gross and creepy. Positively, the relationship doesn't continue that way for long. Hank Rearden learns his ways, and sans regret, he discovers he loved her all along, and like magic he starts to treat her like a human being. It's funny because Dagny doesn't stay with him much longer and it seems she turns to her childhood sweetheart, Francisco Domingo Carlos Andres Sebastian d'Anconia, who owns the largest copper mining industry in the world, which seems only natural with a name like that. He and Dagny are all lovey dovey at one point; he confesses his love, she is afraid to confess hers, but you can feel it from the heat emanating from her crotch, and basically he goes away. While reading this, I expected her to go after him, but Ayn Rand throws a curve ball, and Dagny crash lands her plane in someone's front lawn and ends up falling in love with him in less than a month. At this point Hank and Francisco have sacrificed everything for her, but she must follow her latest fling, who happens to be...dun, dun, dun, dun...John Galt! Who I have failed to mention in my entire review, but the likes of which everyone can't stop talking about throughout the entire novel. He's actually a really good character. He's probably the smartest of the three men, and also the handsomest, so I'm happy for Dagny. And it's pretty much all happily ever after despite some serious shit hitting the fan by the end of it all, which you will need to read to find out. 
 I've mentioned a few of the things I didn't like about the novel already, but the number one thing that made me grate my teeth is the 60 page speech given in the later part of the book. I have to warn you, this part is so repetitive, you might consider skipping ahead to when the Galt man stops talking. I think he feels he has to make up for being left out in the majority of the novel. One might ask why John Galt feels the need to talk to us for 3 hours, but one needs some backdrop. First of all, Ayn Rand is a genius. She was born in Russia, so English isn't even her first language, and yet she writes these opuses that 99% of today's authors couldn't even dream of ever writing. Basically, she is a smart woman. She also created a remarkable philosophy that is noticeably well thought out. It seems in her opinion, all the modern philosophers at her time were crap so she had to come up with one of her own. Going back, throughout the novel we get a sense of what she believes; her philosophy of objectivisim, every man must not help another person without a personal gain involved. This sounds kind of selfish and "bad," but it makes sense in a strange twisted way, and if everyone did this we would be a very productive/successful society. So in this 60 page speech, she reiterates her philosophy, spelling it out as plain as day in case you weren't paying attention the last 1000 pages. This is what I didn't really like. I mean, I get that it is long because of its importance to the novel; however, I could not stomach its repetitiveness. Reading the whole thing might not take very long in hindsight, but, at the time, it felt like forever. I kept stopping so many times because I was so peeved, that those 60 pages ended up taking 3 days to read. It was torture and at times I wanted to throw the book against a wall. In fact, instead of hooking up electrodes to John Galt's body to torture him, how about forcing him to have to listen to his speech over and over? How many sentences do you need to include to say the same thing? 5? 6? 11? And how many paragraphs do you need to say the same thing? 100's apparently. Pages and pages of an idea that could be distilled into maybe 5 pages at the most, preferably! If brevity is the soul of wit, this book is not exactly witty, but I guess Ayn didn't mean to be so, she was meaning to revolutionalize the country by pounding objectivism into our head until we are subconsciously killing baby looters in our sleep, and judging by the huge success and following of her books it seems to have left an impact. 
 All in all, I loved how much this book makes you think. Frighteningly, many people in this country do not think. They simply repeat the things they hear on the news or from other people, and the majority if not all the mistakes that are made in this country is due to not thinking. So, Ayn Rand really gets your rational mind juices flowing. I would give this book 5 stars due to its genius, but it could have been shorter, and I did not like the affair between Dagny and Rearden in the middle there. So I'm demoting it to 4 stars. Anything lower than 4 stars is ludicrous. This book is too good for that. 
 Do I recommend others to read this book? I think so after some considerable thought. I think it's an important book to read, and it will definitely let you see a new perspective that you might not have seen otherwise. This book will change how you think. The only reason I might not recommend it is that it is very repetitive. When the book gets good it really gets good, but 30% of it is recycled rhetoric. It was seriously hard for me to stomach, although I did get through it with a little bit of academic motivation. So yeah! Give it a read if you haven't already, and it would be nice to see what you think. Judging by reading a few of these reviews, this book seems to polarize readers. But as a liberal myself, I really enjoyed it, so don't think you have to be conservative or something to get something from it.