Holy crap

[thebitterguy]

Check the list here for proof of why you can't trust the people. #1 book on the Reader's list? Atlas Shrugged. #2? The Fountainhead. #3? Battlefield Earth.

When 70% of the top ten list is Ayn Rand and L. Ron, you can safely assume that scent ain't trout.

Comments

[bandersnitch.livejournal.com]

Or that Tom Cruise and his Acolytes wrote the list.

[thebitterguy]

Are they not his disciples now?

[thetathx1138.livejournal.com]

Close. The Scientologists and the Rand dweebs crash every one of these lists with a high enough profile and try to stuff the ballot box. It's an unofficial decision at this point to disregard votes for these authors on these polls.

[indefatigable42.livejournal.com]

That house is not as random as it looks.

[thebitterguy]

No, I think the books may have been cooked.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Dear gods, it's the unholy trinity of bad writing - Rand, Hubbard, and Heinlein. I'm embarrassed that some novels that I actually like (like Windling's The Wood Wife) are on that list. OTOH, while I enjoyed Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton, saying with was the best novel of anything except perhaps the day it was published (if that) is ludicrously excessive praise.

I can see two possible reasons for this horrid list:

1) Most people really are that devoid of taste and good sense.

2) The formula for obtaining the reader votes allowed individuals to vote more than once and basement dwelling troglodytes devoid of all taste are far more inclined to spend their time voting for the favorite novels 300 times than people with more taste and more of a life. I'm betting on 2, but fear the truth is 1.

[thebitterguy]

Or an unholy union of Scientologist and Objectivist ballot stuffing.

[doc-mystery.livejournal.com]

Hmm...I don't see a single novel on both lists.

It does seem that the Reader's list is overly represented with votes from literary Scientologists and fans of the philosophy of Objectivism.

I'll comment also that Ayn Rand's works were very popular during the 1950s, and many of her works were international bestsellers and she was lauded by the pundits, this at a time before such literary phenomenom were common.

I rather liked "Atlas Shrugged" myself, especially if you read it as a pastiche Doc Savage adventure (where Doc actually never shows up). I'd put it in my own top 100, but not in my top 10 books.

::B::

[doc-mystery.livejournal.com]

Um...why are you mentioning "films" in the parent post, when the lists are of top 100 books?

::B::

[thebitterguy]

It was late, I was tired.

[doc-mystery.livejournal.com]

(still spluttering)

Not only that, but this list is almost 9 years old!

(wanders off and yells at some kids to get off his lawn)

::B::

[thetathx1138.livejournal.com]

Personally, I've always preferred Matt Ruff's elaborate satire "Sewer, Gas, & Electric." Around the moment a rubber salami is put in a railgun and used to sink a fishing trowler, I fell in love.

[sixteenbynine.livejournal.com]

I smell ballot-stuffing.

[thebitterguy]

Oh yeah.

[(Anonymous)]

The list is not without some interest -- "The Worm Oroborous" at position 32? That's very intriguing. I know I've heard of it (I even own a copy), but it startles me that enough people cared enough to stuff it in a ballot box that it made position 32. Wow.

[sixteenbynine.livejournal.com]

I smell EGREGIOUS ballet-stuffing.