Ayn Rand & John Grisham

While trying to decide who is my favorite novelist, I discovered that it was impossible to pick just one when I have two. I love John Grisham and Ayn Rand. What I love about them is the fact that they write about things that actually relate directly to real life occurrences. For example with Grisham’s novel Runaway Jury, Big companies are more than capable of swaying the government and justice systems in their favor. Or How about the characters in Rand’s Atlas Shrugged these are individuals that were fighting against those that will preach self immolation as a virtue.

John Grisham was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas in his youth, Grisham’s family started traveling around the South, until they finally settled in Southaven in DeSoto County, Mississippi. As a child, Grisham wanted to be a baseball player, but ended up graduating from Mississippi State University in 1977, with a BS degree in accounting instead. He later enrolled in the University of Mississippi School of Law to become a tax lawyer, but his interest shifted to general civil litigation. He graduated in 1983 with a JD degree specializing in criminal law.

I read my first John Grisham novel ” A Time To Kill” when I was 12 years old, it was given to me by my sister and I just couldn’t put it down. You may remember “A Time To Kill” movie adaptation starring Samuel Jackson. Where 10 year old Tonya Hailey is viciously raped and beaten by two white racists Pete Willard and Billy Ray. Shortly thereafter, Tonya is found and rushed to a hospital, while Pete and Billy Ray are heard bragging in a local bar about what they did to Tonya. Tonya’s distraught and enraged father, Carl Lee Hailey (played by Samuel Jackson), recalls a similar case from the year before, in which four white men raped a black girl in a nearby town and were acquitted. Carl Lee is determined not to allow that to happen in this case. Consequently, while Deputy DeWayne Powell Looney is escorting Pete and Billy Ray up a flight of stairs inside the courthouse, Carl Lee emerges from a nearby closet with an assault rifle and kills Pete and Billy Ray.

Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism. I first started reading Rand in High School and I quickly fell in love with her philosophy of objectivism. I understand that it is those that are telling you that sacrifices must be made that are generally the first ones to collect the sacrificial offerings. Hopefully many of you have seen the Movie Atlas Shrugged starring Edi Gathegi adapted from her book of the same name, about a group of hard working businesspeople and inventors being punished for being what they were. Told that it was their moral obligation to carry the weight of the world on their shoulders whom rebelled in the end. How real is that? How many inventors can you remember that have been cheated out of their patents?

What are some of your favorite books? Who are some of your favorite authors? Let me know by leaving your comments below, and who knows maybe your selection will be featured here.


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