Objectivism is basically built on a bunch of strange axioms, and to a large part completely denies that they're arbitrarily chosen axioms instead of hard facts. They treat logic built on other axioms as inherently wrong.

The nice thing about a book cover is that it tells you which book is inside, saving you the trouble of having to read it every time.

It's sometimes reasonable to judge books by their covers.

There's enough randian evangelism on this forum without inviting more.

It's hard to summarise. Read "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology" which contains the fundamentals of a theory of knowledge, specifically a theory of the nature of concepts. That's the part which is relevant for this discussion and is also the foundation for everything else.

Ultimately you have to read Rand rather than read about her, as so many of her critics enjoy a somewhat loose relationship with reality. For example, the comment in this thread about "randian evangelism" on HN. I've encountered two other Objectivists on HN, whereas every week we have multiple hundred-comment threads on how fantastic an idea universal basic income is. That's pretty ineffective evangelism.