this is not a journal title

Since others have already given good summaries of Rand's philosophy, I feel okay saying this: IMNSHO, if you can get through multiple volumes of Goodkind's work, you can get through _Atlas Shrugged_. Frankly, I'd rather reread Rand than ever touch Goodkind again, and the only way I got through Atlas was pure stubbornness - I was not going to let that book get the better of me, no matter how much I hated it. After the first 3 volumes of Goodkind, I found his ideas so offensive and repulsive that I lost all respect for everything he'd written. Which is a shame; I'd enjoyed his world and plots a great deal for a while.