The Fountainhead

I finished it!
It took a whole month, but I finished it.
It was horrible. I didn't like it at all and I think it was stressing me out.
I liked Atlas Shrugged. The story was there and I believed it and I liked it.

Here I just didn't get it. I didn't understand why Roark and Dominique couldn't just be together. Why did they have to make it so difficult for themselves and everyone else? They both had to be ruined in order for them to be together? Whatever with that.

I get the selfishness thing. I understood Ayn Rand's point on that. It was the same thing in Atlas Shrugged, but here I felt like I was being beat over the head with it with long monologues and repetition. I also got the message about how the media manipulates information. What I learned is that this in not unique to my lifetime or with the Internet. Apparently it's been around for a while. That was the one redeeming idea I got from the book.

As it says on the book cover, "It's a novel of ideas". Yes, it is, but it's not a novel with a good story.

I always thought I had to read this book because I was an architect and it was important to my understanding of the profession. It's not. Being an architect really didn't add anything to my understanding of either this book or the architecture profession.

Am I glad I read it? Yes. It's one of those classic books I feel that I need to have knowledge of. Will I recommend it to others? Probably not unless, like me, they are just trying to add notches to their bed posts.