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When I finish a book, I'm always eager to learn what other people thought of it, so I usually spend some time reading reviews of it online. I also usually get frustrated that most reviews spend a lot of time summarizing the book, which I'm not interested in. After reading The Fountainhead, I got frustrated as usual, and then happened to find this book and decided to try it. It scratched that itch a lot better than reading reviews online! I think I'm going to try looking for meta books more often.
All the essays in this book seemed extremely well-researched and thoughtful. I especially liked the essays on the history of The Fountainhead because I learned a lot of objective facts from those. My favorite two described the major revisions Rand made to the Fountainhead, and the process of turning it into a movie. I liked seeing how different the final book was from both the initial draft and screenplays written by people other than Rand.
My main complaint about this book is that not a single essay had anything negative to say about The Fountainhead, or even anything neutral or less than glowing. It would have been nice to get a more balanced set of perspectives.
Another minor complaint is that it included discussion of Atlas Shrugged and a significant spoiler for We the Living. I've already read We the Living, and there weren't really spoilers per se for Atlas Shrugged, but I prefer to know almost nothing about a book before I start reading it, and now I know things like who the main character is and how its theme compares to The Fountainhead's.
All the essays in this book seemed extremely well-researched and thoughtful. I especially liked the essays on the history of The Fountainhead because I learned a lot of objective facts from those. My favorite two described the major revisions Rand made to the Fountainhead, and the process of turning it into a movie. I liked seeing how different the final book was from both the initial draft and screenplays written by people other than Rand.
My main complaint about this book is that not a single essay had anything negative to say about The Fountainhead, or even anything neutral or less than glowing. It would have been nice to get a more balanced set of perspectives.
Another minor complaint is that it included discussion of Atlas Shrugged and a significant spoiler for We the Living. I've already read We the Living, and there weren't really spoilers per se for Atlas Shrugged, but I prefer to know almost nothing about a book before I start reading it, and now I know things like who the main character is and how its theme compares to The Fountainhead's.
