Atlas Shrugged Readalong Sign-ups:

eek.

Oh sorry. I am happy to announce the sign-ups for the March and April 2011 readalong of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. And I will be completely upfront: I am absolutely petrified of reading this, so someone has to join me. I can't do this alone. Do it for me!

I think Rand is high on everyone's list of scary authors we say we are eventually going to read and never do. Additionally, I think we all never DO read her work. It has been described to me as lofty, insane, rambling, and completely "out-there." That makes me nervous. And excited.

Will this live up to the hype?

For your, and my, benefit, here is a description taken from Goodreads.com;

"Set in a near-future U.S.A. whose economy is collapsing as a result of the mysterious disappearance of leading innovators and industrialists, this novel presents an astounding panorama of human life-from the productive genius who becomes a worthless playboy...to the great steel industrialist who does not know that he is working for his own destruction...to the philosopher who becomes a pirate...to the woman who runs a transcontinental railroad...to the lowest track worker in her train tunnels.

Peopled by larger-than-life heroes and villains, charged with towering questions of good and evil, Atlas Shrugged is a philosophical revolution told in the form of an action thriller."

See? That doesn't sound all that bad!

I have developed a posting schedule that I will be following. Based on the posts from War and Peace and my own progress with that chunker, I was going to reduce the amount of posts. With the combination of these two-month readalongs with my monthly ones, I just need to break them apart more! Lucky for me, Rand decided to chunk her novel into three parts, so there will be three posts to correlate.

I am basing all of the pages based on my edition, which is 50th Anniversary Edition put out by Signet (it is mass market size...and boy is this print tiny...). Posts will go as follows:

• Post 1 will be posted on March 19th: Post 1 will cover Part 1 (about 312 pages)
• Post 2 will be posted on April 8th: Post 2 will cover Part 2 (about 328 pages)
• Post 3 will be posted on April 30th: Post 3 will cover Part 3 (about 426 pages-there are a few extra days built in for this one-and the readalong on April 9th!)

I do so hope that at least one person will decide to undertake this madness with me. A good friend of mine, who is not crazy, considers this one of her favorite books. And I trust her opinion so I am hoping good things?

If you want in, please comment, state your insanity, and leave me a link to your blog so I can link you here (that way we can all cheer you on!). Keep in mind that all participants of my readalongs who complete the readalong are getting something special (more on that when you finish one!), so sign up if you're interested!

I only require my participants to make their post and link it here. You don't have to comment on other participants' posts, but of course, that is always encouraged.

Please spread the word around so that someone (hopefully YOU) might decide to join me. :)

Participants:
Zoe
Shelley
Kristi
Lindsey
Mindy
Michelle
Christina
Adam
Melissa
Stacy
Jenica704
The Book Nook
Christina