Ed Driscoll interviews Jennifer Burns, author of (one of) the new Ayn Rand biography, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right:

Timely, as I've recently finished reading Rand's science fiction novel, Atlas Shrugged. I found it inspiring, brilliant, and well worth wide consideration...but simultaneously not so all-encompassing that one could build any sort of life or political philosophy solely out of what's contained therein. Rand certainly teases out a thread of the fabric of human experience and gives it a thorough going-over, but it is by no means the whole cloth. Still, the echoes with current events come frequently enough to give you more than one moment of "Hmmmm..."

Though the paperback version I have is the better part of 1100 pages it does read fast (seriously), and becomes quite skimmable after not too far in. She was certainly an author in search of an editor.

I highly recommend Whittaker Chambers' classic review, Big Sister Is Watching You from National Review, 1957, as well as the more recent piece by Anthony Daniels (aka Theodore Dalrymple): Ayn Rand: engineer of souls, for a couple of well-written pieces that explain, in effect, why you shouldn't get too carried away.

The only other Rand I've read are We the Living, and The Fountainhead. Both were worth the time.