Ayn Rand Writes a Harsh Letter To Her 17-Year-Old Niece: “I Will Write You Off As a Rotten Person” (1949) — openculture.com

I recently happened upon the Modern Library’s “100 Best Novels” list and noticed something interesting. The list divides into two columns—the “Board’s List” on the left and “Reader’s List” on the right. The “Board’s List” contains in its top ten such expected “great books” as Joyce’s Ulysses (#1) and William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury (#6). These are indeed worthy titles, but not the most accessible of books, to be sure, though Ulysses does appear at number eleven on the “Reader’s List.” At the very top of that more popular ranking, however, is a book the literati could not find more worthy of contempt: Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Just below it is Rand’s The Fountainhead, and at numbers seven and eight, respectively, her Anthem and We the Living. (Also in the top ten on the “Reader’s List,” three novels by L. Ron Hubbard.)

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