Bust Out The Confetti: I Know Who John Galt Is.

I just finished Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand today, after one grueling month of reading exclusively at my place of employment. Do I get some sort of prize for this accomplishment? Perhaps a certificate or a ribbon? I'd even settle for a goddamned shiny trinket. I know its not like reading Joyce or anything, but fuck, man, no matter how you slice it a thousand pages is an investment and I demand a return on my investment other than a complete and inescapable feeling of inadeqaucy.

Dont get me wrong, I absolutley love the book. It is every bit as exciting, breathtaking, and tremendous in scope as the back of the book says. I have never read anything like it and I don't know if there is an author alive today that could write anything half as compelling half as well as Rand did. Its just that, as I said before, it makes anyone remotely lazy feel like shit. And the 52 page soliloquy that Galt delivers towards the end of the story is a bit excessive. Just a bit. Yes, I know she's outlining Objectivism explicitly for the first time, but its not like she didn't spend the first 922 pages saying the same damn thing. Whatever. Who has my trinket?