Here's
Submitted by jim on Tue, 11/23/1999 - 11:19
Tags:
Here's the big one that got me thinking, "that list isn't my list." I mean, the board picked Ulysses as #1, while Ayn Rand snagged #1 and #2 on the reader's picks. Fer cryin' out loud.
Either there's an awful lot more Rand followers out there than I'd have guessed, or they do a really good job of stacking the results of many of these types of polls. Amazon.com's list of the best books of the millenium had several Rand books quite high up on the list. I read Atlas Shrugged and I'm glad I did, but I wouldn't put it in my top 25 of all time. (Matt Ruff's satire of it perhaps though )
Damn right they stuffed the ballot box! Meanwhile, Random House kept pulling other choices off the list as soon as they appeared (Shatner's "Tek Lords" was zapped *several* times, despite our efforts. Hey, he's better than L. Ron, another top 10 ringer STILL THERE, with no mention of his great "Xenu" stories!). Rand, for all her strident philosophy, was just...not...much of a storyteller--certainly nowhere NEAR the greatness that is Shatner.
I am John Galt's daddy.
Dr. J, LystWorthy weblog (oooh, gotta getta login! This site looks fun...)
Thanks! While I haven't read any of Shatner's stuff, I can easily speak about his other work. I'm still resentful that the powers-that-be killed Kirk in such an ignominious fashion. More on that, and the decline of Trek in general, here. Sad to agree with most of it.
I've wondered about ballot-stuffing myself. I read The Fountainhead, liked it (not top-25 though), and then attempted Atlas Shrugged. I got about 1/5 of the way through before going into rampant-individualism-overload mode.