Late last night, I lay in bed and finished reading Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead” for the second time in 20 years.

How different an experience it was from the time back in 1982 when I read it the first time, shortly before my first year engineering exams. I had “borrowed” the book from my mother’s huge collection of books a few weeks earlier, based largely on the impressive number of pages. Because of the way I speed-read books, page-count was as important to me as plot, genre and author.

One of the reasons why I wanted to re-read this particular book was to refresh my memories about Howard Roark, Ayn Rand’s “superman” in the book, to re-convince myself that having a goal, and taking the stoney road to it, is all worthwhile in the end.

It was an interesting experience reading passages I had before, but with a younger mind that still had to learn so much about the world. Today, the same passages took on completely different meanings.

Ah well, one lives and one learns, I guess.

Hmmm…. should I dive into “Atlas Shrugged” again, as well?