[sleightofmind]

It's been a long time since I read My Antonia. Loved it. If memory serves, though, wasn't the main male character quite the self-made man? Again, it's been a while. Beautiful picture of the harsh reality, and stark beauty of life on the plains.

If you want Ayn Rand that makes sense, read We the Living, in my opinion, by far her best work. As a matter of fact, I'd say Ayn Rand's three major works, can be rated worst to best with length being the determining factor. Worst -- Atlas Shrugged. If ever a book needed an editor of steely resolve, it was that windbag of a novel -- would have been great at 1/2 it's length. The Fountainhead was tighter and better. But We the Living is the best because it is set in the world of her youth and makes her rah-rah cheerleading for capitalism and her deep hatred of communism completely relatable in context. The story never leaves the Soviet Union, so it's very different from her other work.

I love capitalism, but reading Atlas Shrugged left me feeling like this is one hard woman. Reading We the Living left me feeling like now I get it -- I'd be hard, too.

[Maursault]

Even notably bad writing, even if espousing the fatally flawed and incomplete ideology of Objectivism, leading to the fatally flawed political movement of Libertarianism, which if practiced ultimately results in pure Socialism, may be ranked: bad, worse, and worst. I couldn't say exactly who the singular worst popular writer of the 20th Century was, but certainly Rand must be a strong contender.