I like Ayn Rand. Most people that read her go way too far with her ideas (once you start spouting lines from Atlas Shrugged verbatim, you've gone too far, and too many people go too far), but reading her at sixteen got me largely out of the depressive "I'm a cog in the school system" mood I was in, and it has that effect on a lot of people. As far as books worth reading as a young adult go, The Fountainhead is way up there. It gets you happier and healthier going out than you were coming in, and even once you lose that belief that Rand is right about everything, she's incredible pulp reading, up there with Dan Brown. (A pirate philosopher meets a dashing Spanish copper miner? Come on.)
I like Ayn Rand. Most people that read her go way too far with her ideas (once you start spouting lines from Atlas Shrugged verbatim, you've gone too far, and too many people go too far), but reading her at sixteen got me largely out of the depressive "I'm a cog in the school system" mood I was in, and it has that effect on a lot of people. As far as books worth reading as a young adult go, The Fountainhead is way up there. It gets you happier and healthier going out than you were coming in, and even once you lose that belief that Rand is right about everything, she's incredible pulp reading, up there with Dan Brown. (A pirate philosopher meets a dashing Spanish copper miner? Come on.)