Personally I love reading novels of worlds that have no basis in reality. I also love authors that repeat themselves over and over because I have memory issues and can't remember the last sentence I've read.

Oh, and I also love reading novels of worlds that have no basis in reality.

"This author deserves to die on welfare"

Back when I was in junior high in the early 1980s, I found a copy of Atlas Shrugged on my father's bookshelf, and started reading it. I can't remember how far I got into it, but I do remember thinking it was just awful in just about every way: story, writing, pacing, everything.

I asked Dad about it, "Oh, that. It's terrible, isn't it?" A friend had given it to him. Neither one of us finished reading it and after that it ended up at a book reseller.
On the plus side, he'd gone through his books and gave me James Clavell's Shogun to read, which was an awesome novel.

I still cannot believe a novel this terrible inspired a successful movement that was thoroughly endorsed by presidents.

If I had a time machine I would go back in time and publish it, but make sure that it only had a limited release. Never got super big just big enough so that some people had heard of it, and then I would sue Ayn Rand when she published her version. Win easily and announce that I wrote it as a parody, mocking people who think that being overly self reliant and rejecting community is a good way to live, for they are like house cats.. overly dependent on others yet thoroughly convinced of their own independence. "As Ms. Rand demonstrated by stealing my book and claiming it as her own."

Then I'd put a time capsule with the fucking source code to Bioshock 1, 2, and Infinite somewhere to preserve those games in the timeline.

The damage that book has done to this world...

Reading Atlas Shrugged is more like a hazing ritual conservatives inflict on each other.

I have to be in the minority of sane people who enjoyed this book.

To be fair, I had no context and read the first 10 pages assuming it was satire. The rest of the experience was bizarre. In the first chapter the main character ignores the advice of the train employees and orders the train to run despite the signal being red. It's touted as taking responsibility when none else would. Utterly insane to me that someone who had been out of the area for decades, making management level decisions, would decide they know better than the worker on the ground who does the job daily. The contempt and arrogance leading to destruction - a great critique of management structure and survivor bias. How is it not satire?

Through the looking glass with a self important free capitalist narcissist, with almost no experience of the world and commerce outside their bubble, self hating tirade against perceived inability. Fascinating stuff

I remember reading The Foundtainhead and, when I finished I realized what a lousy, shitty philosopher Ayn Rand was.

And that all my architect friends had terrible egos.

The amount of people with both the patience to read it and the inability to tell that it is describing a fantasy land with magic and wizards is worrying.

Since everyone else is talking about Ayn, let me tell you about Dorothy Parker.

You know that movie, "A Star Is Born?" She wrote the original version. She was a famous writer, known for her devastating insults. She was also an early Anti-Fascist and supporter of Martin Luther King, JR.

Totally underappreciated and far more deserving of fame than Ms. Rand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Parker

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algonquin_Round_Table

https://bookshop.org/search?keywords=dorothy+parker

So what's up with this novel? Can't find anything obvious about it - only that it's mighty popular among conservatives (which is usually a red flag)

I'm the person who basically never throws a book away (I did once, but I bought a replacement after the old version literally broke apart in several places). But I would light a chimney with "Atlas shrugged", if only to prevent it from falling in gullible hands.

what book would be the opposite of AS

tbh I thought that was Tilda Swinton

There's at least a grain of truth in that book. Try starting a business or producing something.

Look at domestic attempts to mine lithium or building semiconductor plants. Try building anything here.

“When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing; when you see that money is flowing to those who deal not in goods, but in favors; when you see that men get rich more easily by graft than by work, and your laws no longer protect you against them, but protect them against you. . . you may know that your society is doomed.”

Eh, it wasn't bad as a revenge fantasy. You might like it if you enjoy thinking about how all the people who don't appreciate you would be screwed if you just left. The political philosophy being proposed won't be too offensive if you already lean libertarian.

My main objection to the book (other than the infamous speech, which I admit I couldn't read all the way through) is that it's a sort of morality play with with exaggerated good and bad and no shades of gray, but it keeps denying this and insisting that the real world really is that black and white. The reader ought to take it with more than a little pinch of salt.

Oh, and that Ayn Rand's self-insert has a BDSM fetish I really would have preferred not to know about. (Why do authors keep inserting their kinks into books? I'm looking at you, Robert Jordan. And especially at you, Piers Anthony.)