Rocket Surgery

Here’s my list of the 10 best books (series) ever:

10. Lord of the Flies, William Golding

9. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

8. Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes

7. The Godfather, Mario Puzo

6. A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess

5. Harry Potter Series, J. K. Rowling (Of these, Half-Blood Prince is my favorite)

4. Catch-22, Joseph Heller

3. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand

2. The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger

1. 1984, George Orwell

(Also, as a side note, the worst book ever was Billy Budd by Herman Melville)

Frequently when I read a book that has not been made into a movie, I mentally pick actors and actresses for the characters. I have recently been reading Atlas Shrugged (again) and here are my casting choices:

Dagny Taggart - Hilary Swank
To be honest, this was not the first person that came to mind. Mary-Louise Parker actually came to mind first, but she’s getting too long in the tooth for the role. But Hilary Swank is the right age, has the right look, is tough, and can really, really act. And most importantly, she could carry the movie. I understand that Angelina Jolie has been cast in the real project that is underway, but she just doesn’t seem right to me. She seems overly sexual, so much so I don’t think she could pull off the effective executive part right. Nobody was supposed to notice her beauty except the brilliant men in her life, etc., and for people not to see Angelina Jolie in a non-sexual manner just seems preposterous.

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“I quit when medicine was placed under State control, some years ago,” said Dr. Hendricks. “Do you know what it takes to perform a brain operation? Do you know the kind of skill it demands, and the years of passionate, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to acquire that skill? That was what I would not place at the disposal of men whose sole qualification to rule me was their capacity to spout the fraudulent generalities that got them elected to the privilege of enforcing their wishes at the point of a gun. I would not let them dictate the purpose for which my years of study had been spent, or the conditions of my work, or my choice of patients, or the amount of my reward. I observed that in all the discussions that preceded the enslavement of medicine, men discussed everything — except the desires of doctors. Men considered only the ‘welfare’ of the patients, with no thought given for those who were to provide it. That a doctor should have any right, desire or choice in the matter was regarded as irrelevant selfishness; his is not to choose, they said, only ‘to serve.’ That a man who’s willing to work under compulsion is too dangerous a brute to entrust with a job in the stockyards–never occurred to those who proposed to help the sick by making life impossible for the healthy. I have often wondered at the smugness with which people assert their right to enslave me, to control my work, to force my will, to violate my conscience, to stifle mt mind–yet what is it that they expect to depend on, when they lie on an operating table under my hands? Their moral code has taught them to believe that it is safe to rely on the virtue of their victims. Well, that is the virtue I have withdrawn. Let them discover the kind of doctors that their system will now produce. Let them discover, in their operating rooms and hospital wards, that it is not safe to place their lives in the hands of a man whose life they have throttled. It is not safe, if he is the sort of man who resents it–and still less safe, if he is the sort who doesn’t.”

Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, p683.