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qup • yesterday at 2:52 PM • 2 replies • view on HN

The Library of Congress rated it the second most influential book of all time, after the Bible.

That's why I read it.

It's very cool, especially on HN, to say how terrible it is. But, as we used to say in rebuttal: scoreboard!


Replies

kbelder • yesterday at 5:54 PM

I can understand a lot of the dislike of that novel, but her description of how the United States slowly falls apart due to culturally-reinforced incompetence is worth appreciating.

netsharc • yesterday at 3:41 PM

I was incredulous, I wondered what sort of LoC does book rankings like it's Buzzfeed, I thought "Maybe it's the LoC after a Trump-infestation or DOGE", but (1):

> In 1991 the Book of the Month Club and Library of Congress asked readers to name the most influential book in their lives: Atlas Shrugged came in second only to the Bible.

The fact that you equate a survey result (who knows who heard of the survey, or if there was a campaign to skew the results) to the LoC giving it a rating, and "that's why I read it", and you think this is a good rebuttal, reveals to me a lot about you.

(1) https://www.atlassociety.org/post/ayn-rands-atlas-shrugged-p...

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