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Comment by johng | Hacker News Reader

I get a completely different take. To me, it's empowering to young individuals, especially (I would guess) young females because the main character is a very strong self-driven female.

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The self-driven female arrives in utopia by accident, when her plane crashes there. It hardly seems empowering, but does say a lot about utopia.

Dagny is the first "Anti-Mary Sue" I can remember in literature. She's ostensibly the protagonist, but is literally worse at everything than her male couterparts.

The problem was that all the people who volunteered that they’d read the book were narcissistic assholes who just became much bigger assholes afterward.

I really wanted to read that book as a young man to understand why it was so toxic. But I didn’t want anyone to ever see me reading it. I went as far as making a plan to glue another book cover over it. Problem was I also didn’t want the Rand estate to profit from my curiosity.

I love my e-reader. Nobody knows what i am reading. I have heard ebooks are available for free from the shady end of the web, which is great for those who are disadvantaged or from poor nations with little alternative access, but i believe that you should pay if you can afford it (regardless of your thoughts about the author).

Heh. True. The urge has passed but I’m sure there are some college kids who might take you up on the suggestion. I know a guy who is reading romance novels. Voraciously. He must have read a few hundred by now.

Which e-reader? If Kindle, then Amazon knows exactly what you're reading. They even know how long it took you to read each page, when and where you skipped to, and text you searched for, etc.

I don't disagree with you (in fact I very much agree) but I use a Remarkable 2 now to avoid the incredible depth of spying.

As someone who grew up in a society with rampant corruption (India), Fountainhead (the destruction of buildings at the end of the novel) and Atlas Shrugged (motivated me into leaving India to self-implode while I traveled to US to have a better life) quite a impression on my teenage years. It was only later when I thought about these books more that I realized how crazy they are.

In the meantime, India didn't self-implode, at least not yet.

I’ve seen a certain type of person gravitate towards this book, that is usually more of a selfish goal driven type.

There's also just the curiosity type, like a friend i have. similarly, people who aren't pervs read Nabokov's Lolita, because Nabokov writes amazingly, and it's just one of his books.

Curious people are more open to variety in thinking. I can’t answer as to whether this book resonates with curious minds and if it does to what extent. As a curious mind myself this book did not resonate with me much but am aware im not the targeted audience.

Biased take probably...

I have yet to meet a person that isn't primarily self interested. They must exist, but they are exceedingly rare.

Are you refering to others as narcissistic for reading it, and saying narcissism prevented you from reading it?

What part of “became bigger assholes after” makes you think that’s a categorization comment rather than an observational one?

Many authors of great works were not wonderful people, and there’s no way to verify their ‘correctness’. For a very current example, see Gaiman, who had a sterling reputation which is now in doubt.

In any case, you are the one most harmed by your own blinders, and you don’t know what you’re missing.

Hinkley's on point.

It seems like you might not understand that a person can read a book without necessarily agreeing with everything the author writes about.

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