"It is not advisable, James, to venture unsolicited opinions. You should spare yourself the embarrassing discovery of their exact value to your listener." -- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
I could take that the above quote personally, but I won't. In fact, I include Ayn Rand on my list for two reasons the first being that I have read A LOT of Ayn Rand, and when I say a lot it is only three books, ( Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, We the Living) but with 645,000 words in Atlas Shrugged alone you get the picture. Plus, I feel obliged to mention her due to the fact that four of her books made the top ten readers choice of the 100 best novels as compiled by the random house Modern Library. (It also bares noting that none of her books made the list according to board members of the Modern Library.) In reality, her books are elitist, masturbatory, didactic and a little too romantic for my tastes. But for whatever reason her books have mass appeal and in the end you can't discount that. Oh, yeah, and this schmuck even made a career of doing nothing more than jabbering about Rand. In some unfortunate twist of fate I was subjected to a lecture by the guy recorded on cassette tape on some marathon overnight trip to New York. Take my word for it: the drivel that comes out of his mouth has absolutely no value.