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[–] SLUMLORD_MILLIONAIRE 0 points 4 points (+4|-0) ago 

I'm a huge Ayn Rand fan. Both my daughters are named after her. I personally love 'Anthem' and if I had to pick a favorite that would be it.

I have a special place in my heart for Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

Anthem was the first book I chose to read, outside of school. I didn't have to read it for an assignment or for anything else. I picked it up off the shelf in the library and started reading it and started a lifelong love of Ayn Rand. It's really simplistic and written for a 6th-7th grade reading level. It's super short too. Only 108 pages if I remember correctly. I've sat down and read it in a single session many times.

I didn't know anything about Ayn's philosophy or any of her politics or anything. The book to me was just a post apocalyptic love story. I didn't even realize the significance of what I was reading until much later. Her books have that affect on you though.

I really initially just liked the sci-fi utopian (dystopia) aspect of it all. How all of life was regulated and there's one man who is disgusted by it and doesn't know why (holy shit does that appeal to teenagers!) Ayn's vision was different than some of these other YA dystopian fiction books that are popular like the giver, divergent, the hunger games, etc. Those books really appeal to teenagers trying to find their place in the world and their feelings of being different and special and not wanting to really conform to society .... in Anthem the man wasn't really different or special. He was just an average dude that simply found out a truth that others didn't know. In those other books these people are usually born different, they're given this special knowledge by birthright - they've been different (or divergent if you will) their entire lives and then they're thrust into circumstances and become heroes. In Ayn's work you can feel the suffering of the entire society, not through outright oppression but by them taking their nature away. You have the guy that screams through the night, etc. There's an undercurrent of going against nature making individuals miserable. That's so true and even more true today with what society is becoming. When you try to socially engineer people against their biology you end up with a lot of mental illness and pathological behavior and the breakdown of the family unit.