Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Oddly, my junior year English teacher actually assigned us some Ayn Rand. It was just Anthem, pretty much no more than a short story (Amazon says 68 pages in print).

In retrospect, I can't imagine how he got an Ayn Rand book approved for students through the public school system bureaucracy.

Man, down here in Texico Atlas Shrugged was on the required reading list.

Man, down here in Texico Atlas Shrugged was on the required reading list.

Eh. I don't believe that for a second... What high school student is going to read an 1100-page novel where the first 600 or so are slow, boring, character development before things even get interesting? 

I think Atlas is an important book for many reasons, but it's a pretty terrible novel. I feel like it could have been done in about 2/3 the page count, and would have been better for it. 

I can't give my full thoughts on that without crossing a line I probably shouldn't, but IMO Ayn Rand's Anthem novella should be required reading.  It contains ideas that are part of Western civilization cultural cannon, and as such, should be taught.  Now, there's a lot of context and personal commentary I'd add to that, but here I'll just say I think it's the right move to include that book. 

Agreed... And the only thing I'll say on top of that is that there are probably a lot of people who wouldn't agree with the ideas in Atlas Shrugged, but as with anything, often it's a useful read so you at least know what is driving the people with whom you disagree with. 

It's why I took the philosophy class in college, Classic and Contemporary Marxism. It's not that I was then, nor planned to become, a Marxist. But it's best to understand what others think...

To bring it back to books, as part of that class we read Ursula K Le Guin's The Dispossessed. Which was honestly a pretty good book. 

Eh. I don't believe that for a second... What high school student is going to read an 1100-page novel where the first 600 or so are slow, boring, character development before things even get interesting?

I don't disagree with the second part this quote, but all I can say is, it was definitely on my required reading list in high school.  My school had very advanced AP classes with quite rigorous academic requirements.  Atlas Shrugged wasn't even the longest book on the reading list, that distinction belonged to Tolstoy's War and Peace.

Overall I liked the book but it was definitely a slog and the 50-page soliloquy from John Galt didn't help things along.