Fountainhead

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Summary: Greatly Symbolic book
Review: Yes, the characters are impossibly extreme, but they are not there to be 'real'. If it were 'real' it wouldn't be fiction. She said she is a romantic, and that the characters are 'What we should be'. Just wanted to say that first. The symbols and ideas of the book however, are almost impossibly real. Honesty (the best policy) takes on a different tone in this book, Self-honesty. The sex scenes are good, the speeches are long, the plot is easy to figure out 50 pages ahead of you, but you don't know the end (unlike King/Koontz/ect).

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Summary: Zzzzz...I am getting sleepy.
Review: WOW, I have underestimated the ability of books to bore! This 600+ page book really surpassed the mental limit that I had placed on boredom. It reached the peak and cannon-balled straight into the clouds. OK, I must (sheepishly) confess that I read the entire book. In my defense, I thought I would give it a chance. Big mistake. Supposedly, the story-line deals with identity, morals, beauty, change, and everything else underneath the moon. Sure, any 600+ page book has to throw in some ideas (vague and uninteresting as they are presented). The most amazing thing is that Ayn Rand is a famous author and...there is an institute named after her! In one word: WHY?!? This is quasi-literature at its finest and I can't believe that this is a celebrated novel. (Incidentally, I am not bitter because this "novel" (using the term loosely) was typed in the smallest of pixels known to mankind. Well...that just made me even more disgusted.

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Summary: Man's Ego is the Fountainhead of Human Achievement
Review: One of my favorite books of all time. A libertarian's manifesto, Rand mercilessly tore into collectivism, which was something of a political reality - even in America - when the book was written. While her characters are philosophically monolithic and extreme in their behavior, so much the better for their full development and the reader's immersion in the life-long struggle of architect/genius Howard Roark against incompetence and the status quo. A work of philosophy that passes itself off as a page turner, Rand presents a compelling argument in favor of a capitalistic meritocracy ideal. Brilliant writing and powerful thinking are merged in what will surely be regarded as a literary and philosophical classic centuries from now

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Summary: Roarks charcter is the most strongest ever created by man.
Review: The book is made of solid charcters. Roark's charcter is the strongest. He makes you reflect and rethink and redesign and reconstruct your personna

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Summary: Powerful and thought-provoking
Review: The world is divided into two classes of people- those who have read "The Fountainhead" and those who have not.This is a book about truth and one man's struggle to rise above it.Through the central character Howard Roark,the ideal man, Ayn Rand gives us a philosophical treatise,one which dares to delve into our souls.This book will stay with you at every point in your life, forcing you to rethink every action and be true to yourself.This is a book you will reread every year and be amazed at the insights it provides you."The Fountainhead" is a solution-provider for the inner chaos of your mind.This is a book about the beauty of living and how to attain it in your life.Ayn Rand is an artist who blends philosophy with a storyline as compelling and gripping as any modern potboiler. SUCHITRA GOVIND

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Summary: Please, Please, Please Don't Read This Book!!
Review: You may really hate what you see... Frankly, this is not a book for you. That is, it's not for you unless you've made one important insight... You see, if you plan to read this book you may be in for a surprise. Kind of like the surprise of a review that you're in for considering my rating. I loved this book, and it started, for me, a roller-coaster journey of emotion & thought from my earliest and darkest memories as a squirming tot, right through my last cup o' java. You can have no idea of what's in store for you before you begin this trip. This applies to all of life's travels, after all "life's what happens while you're busy making other plans." And this novel is no different, but with a special twist. It will be unlike anything you've ever read before. You honestly will open the windows of you're mind into either a chasm-like, fearful place of fog, into which will shine the diffusive rays of sun, illuminating all that's inside, forcing you to examine everything it holds, and become horrified and turn away from the dark terrors it contains, or into a place where you'll find soltice, companionship, and a peace (and I mean that) unlike any which can be imagined or meditated upon. You may be amazed by the things you've accepted to be true, or you may realize that incredible feeling of justification in the knowledge that at least one other person in the world has experienced the same things as you have. Someone has felt the same disgust in the blind leading the blind devotion of society at large, and has been repulsed at each and every sniveling boot-licking gesture of those who live to please others, and never themselves. Upon stumbling across this world contained in The Fountainhead, my personal journey became populated by the idea of hope. Hope that there must be another - that I am not the only one the world coming to these inevitable conclusions about life. It's amazing how freeing that can be...just the idea that I might some day be able to share these feelings with at least one other person. I'm not saying this book will change you're life. Not at all. I will say that it will force you to examine it. It may justify, repulse, comfort, or terrify you. But I can promise that it will never leave you. By ordinary standards, this has no business being considered a novel. I know of no equal sharing such a description. Please E-mail me if you've read it because of this, and if it's been enjoyable you'll want to read Atlas Shrugged next (a book I consider equal to The Book of Revelation - for the western world). And I would also encourage you to get you're hands on the many books in which Ayn Rand has written articles on many current topics, but with a viewpoint unlike any the popular media have the ego to spin.

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Summary: My Guru - Fountainhead.
Review: Fountainhead is not just a book. Its the truth. Life at its rawest form, man at his best and worst. Its like 'in-your-face'. Its daring to be. Its a book which made me feel "This is the book which makes it easier for me to live amongst all this hypocrisy". Fountainhead shows us of what we could be , but strangely we are unaware or ignorant or plain stupid to not understand of what we could be, of what we could achieve. People would rather follow than lead, they think its easier to compromise. Seriously, its the hardest thing to do. Three cheers for the Achievers of this world

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Summary: The exultation of the human spirit
Review: The attainment of freedom and true self is accomplished by the main character Roark. For the cycnic in all of us, the book inspires a feeling that anything is possible and dreams can become realities. The Fountainhead was the platform for Rand to state her philosophy of objectivism, which basically proposes that people need to realize that egotists can create the impossible vision, and that altruism and "second-handers" can destroy the soul.While it can be argued that objectivism was the basis for espousing anti-establishment propoganda, it provides hope that the human spirit can survive and triumph

Rating:
Summary: Really, really bad
Review: The characters are unreal, the story is unreal, the philosophy, though we all appreciate Ayn's rallying around the individual, is also unreal. A long book to read, when you could be reading better books instead.

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Summary: This Book Will Make You Think - I loved it
Review: If we all had a bit of Howard Roark in us, just a drop, what a world this could be. Rand develops her vision of Superman in him and, while I'm not sure I subscribe fully to her "Capitalism at all Costs" philosophy, I was inspired by the non-conformist-at-all-costs role that Roark embodied. At times the book made me ashamed for not having the power Roark had to be completely unaffected by society and its views of success and acceptance, but then again, no one could be quite as secure as this character. I quit my job when I finished the book, convinced that while I know I've gotta eat, I would like to do so more on my own terms