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Archive through July 30, 2002

The TVClubHouse: Movies & Library ARCHIVES: Library: May 2004 - April 2005: Oprah's Book Club: Good or Bad?: Archive through July 30, 2002 users admin

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Ocean_Islands

Sunday, December 03, 2000 - 5:44 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    

Are Oprah's Book Club selections fair?

Nikkid

Sunday, December 03, 2000 - 6:54 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    

Ummm hit and miss for me OI. I've found some treasures I would not have normally found, so I always give them a quick scan. :) What do you like to read? - I'm a bookworm and have extensive book reading habits.

Leap

Monday, December 04, 2000 - 9:50 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    

Those are my feelings too. I read books that I would otherwise never have known about but I didn't like all of them. Are they fair? Hmmm They are her selections so they can be anything she wants. It doesn't matter if the rest of the world views them as fair.

Ocean_Islands

Monday, December 04, 2000 - 4:52 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    

I'm not a bookworm right now, and I don't watch Oprah. But from a distance, it seems that her selections, the few that I know about, have seemed pretty quirky, about a very narrow audience. She's got the right I guess, it's her show.

Nikkid

Monday, December 04, 2000 - 8:32 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    

To be fair... I don't watch Oprah either, but a few of my favorites - not bestsellers, but books that I found by accident started turning up in her club. So I started paying attention.

Reddravenn

Friday, July 27, 2001 - 10:13 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Just looking around and saw this thread and have to say every Oprah book I have read has left me depressed! If there is a disturbing, sad, depressing book it is sure to make the list the last one I happened to pick up was Backroads.....DON'T! I am officially sworn off all Oprah she is my don't read list for summer.

Max

Friday, July 27, 2001 - 10:39 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
LOL Yeah, I enjoyed some of the first ones. LOVE both books by Wally Lamb. But they are all variations on a theme and that gets boring.

I am reading Stolen Lives, though, which is really interesting. True story and fascinating look at a culture I have a hard time understanding.

Snee

Saturday, August 18, 2001 - 11:09 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
i stopped reading 'oprah' books because all but a paltry few were very dark. although i enjoyed them, i knew i was in for a depressing read. after maybe a year away, i just finished 'drowning ruth' which i liked a lot. i've decided that i will intersperse 'oprah's' with others.

Cinnamongirl

Monday, September 24, 2001 - 3:26 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Try these ones Snee
"Where the Heart is" & "The Pilots Wife" are both Oprah selections and both are great reads. Or how about "Midwives", another good one being made into a movie. "Gap Creek" was good and so was "While I was gone".

I'm in the middle of "Icy Sparks" right now, and its so-far-so-good.

Another book by the author of "Where the heart is" is "The Honk and Holler Opening Soon" I actually thought it was better than the Oprah selection. :)

Car54

Tuesday, September 25, 2001 - 4:52 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
I agree, an Oprah pick is usually a downer for me, but I am really looking forward to The Corrections- Jonathan Franzen's last book was really great!

Resortgirl

Tuesday, October 23, 2001 - 5:59 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
I must like downers because of the "Oprah" books I've read I enjoyed them all. I've only read 4 of them though so that may not be a fair test.

I should say that I am not a big Oprah fan anymore. She is a little too preachy for me now, and I guess I expected all of her book choices to be in that vain.(sp?)

Knightpatti

Sunday, January 20, 2002 - 11:50 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Max the last book I read was Stolen Lives. It made me appreciate what I have immensely and never have any self pity about anything. I saw the author on Rosie and she was such a beautiful woman to have gone through such an ordeal, I had to read her book. What did you think about it?

Max

Monday, January 21, 2002 - 10:11 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Knightpatti,
I still haven't finished Stolen Lives! I like what I've read so far and, as you said, it really makes you appreciate the freedoms you have. It's just that it's so depressing!

I saw her on Oprah twice. The first time, she was still not past everything that had happened, not allowing herself to feel joy. The second time, she had healed a lot more and said that now she's enjoying life a lot and not feeling guilty about it. Truly, her story is a testament to the human spirit. I will finish the book, I just have to be in the right mind-set to do it. :)

Ocean_Islands

Monday, April 08, 2002 - 12:30 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Oprah cops out on readers:

4/07/2002 - Updated 08:50 PM ET

Oprah's Book Club, the final chapter

Bob Minzesheimer, USA TODAY

"She is irreplaceable," says publisher David Rosenthal of Simon & Schuster.

Nancy Pearl, who began the One Book, One City reading program, agrees: "Who else has that broad an audience and talks about books?"

Winfrey's "club" turned books by little-known novelists into best sellers by inviting the writer to appear on her talk show, which reaches 22 million.

She put a stop to the installments on Friday, saying, "It has become harder and harder to find books on a monthly basis that I feel absolutely compelled to share." She might feature books from time to time, but only if they merit her "heartfelt recommendation."

Winfrey wasn't available to elaborate, but few in the industry think she meant there are no good books out there.

That Winfrey had cut back lately — choosing six books last year, down from 11 in 1997 — could mean she had tired of the work involved in running the club.

Says Larry Shapiro, editor of the million-member Book of the Month Club: "The job doesn't get easier. It's a burden and responsibility."

The club is going out with No. 48, Toni Morrison's 1974 novel, Sula, the fourth Morrison pick. Among them is first novel The Bluest Eye, which became a hit only after Winfrey featured it in 2000.

Oprah's Book Club commanded that kind of power. All 47 selections have been best sellers. As soon as Winfrey chose a book, publishers printed up to 600,000 more copies, and booksellers ordered copies without knowing the title.

It was "mind-boggling," says Robert Morgan, who never had a best seller until Winfrey embraced his novel Gap Creek in 2000. He says it was a wonderful paradox: using TV, "which has done so much damage to reading, to increase reading."

But the club was not without controversy. Winfrey's taste was called into question, especially after featured author Jonathan Franzen (The Corrections) said serious readers might be turned off by the association. (A Winfrey spokesperson has said the Franzen flap had nothing to do with the book club decision.)

Still, Oprah revealed that Americans love books, says Carol Fitzgerald, president of Bookreporter.com. "What is interesting," she says, "is how many people have never watched an Oprah Book Club show but still knew the titles and bought them."

She says publishers need to find another way to tap that interest. "The bottom line is, someone outside the book business should not have to bear the responsibility of marketing books. This is a call to publishers to be more creative."

Leaving a legacy of best sellers

Below are Oprah's Book Club selections in the order they were announced, and their highest ranking on the USA TODAY Best-Selling Books list. (The 48th selection, Sula by Toni Morrison, was announced Friday.)

1996 (Started Sept. 17, 1996)

1. The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard: No. 1
2. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison: No. 2
3. The Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton: No. 1

1997

4. She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb: No. 1
5. Stones From the River by Ursula Hegi: No. 2
6. The Rapture of Canaan by Sheri Reynolds: No. 1
7. The Heart of a Woman by Maya Angelou: No. 1
8. Songs In Ordinary Time by Mary McGarry Morris: No. 1
9. A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines: No. 2
10. A Virtuous Woman by Kaye Gibbons: No. 3
11. Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons: No. 2
12. The Best Way to Play by Bill Cosby: No. 17
13. The Treasure Hunt by Bill Cosby: No. 20
14. The Meanest Thing to Say by Bill Cosby: No. 12

1998

15. Paradise by Toni Morrison: No. 1
16. Here on Earth by Alice Hoffman: No. 1
17. Black and Blue by Anna Quindlen: No. 7
18. Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat: No. 2
19. I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb: No. 2
20. What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day by Pearl Cleage: No. 2
21. Midwives by Chris Bohjalian: No. 1
22. Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts: No. 1

1999

23. Jewel by Bret Lott: No. 4
24. The Reader by Bernhard Schlink: No. 2
25. The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve: No. 1
26. White Oleander by Janet Fitch: No. 1
27. Mother of Pearl by Melinda Haynes: No. 8
28. Tara Road by Maeve Binchy: No. 5
29. River, Cross My Heart by Breena Clarke: No. 10
30. Vinegar Hill by A. Manette Ansay: No. 7
31. A Map of the World by Jane Hamilton: No. 6

2000

32. Gap Creek by Robert Morgan: No. 8
33. Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende: No. 8
34. Back Roads by Tawni O'Dell: No. 2
35. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison: No. 2
36. While I Was Gone by Sue Miller: No. 1
37. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver: No. 3
38. Open House by Elizabeth Berg: No. 7
39. Drowning Ruth by Christina Schwarz: No. 6
40. House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III: No. 1

2001

41. We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates: No. 1
42. Icy Sparks by Gwyn Hyman Rubio: No. 4
43. Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail by Malika Oufkir and Michèle Fitoussi: No. 6
44. Cane River by Lalita Tademy: No. 10
45. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen: No. 1
46. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry: No. 22

2002

47. Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald: No. 5

Max

Tuesday, April 09, 2002 - 6:22 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Well, it's too bad that Oprah can only give "heartfelt recommendations" to books that are basically the same theme -- some sort of dysfunction and overcoming it. There are SO many good books out that explore other themes. I like a lot of the books on Oprah's list, but I got really tired of reading the same kinds of stories and spun off into titles of my own choosing.

I think the whole experience she had with JOnathan Franzen's reaction to having this novel, The Corrections, picked for the club, she started souring on the whole thing. Until he balked at being included, all she had was authors being very flattered to be on the list. He sort of burst her bubble, I think.

Perhaps people have used this as a stepping stone to developing a habit of reading and will continue to explore on their own. Publishers will be crying the hardest since they can't guarantee big returns on any one book. Guess they'll have to rely on Imus now (his book picks generally make the NY Times best seller list, too).

Sia

Tuesday, April 09, 2002 - 8:16 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Max, I agree entirely with your point about the backlash (from the author) concerning Jonathan Franzen's awful novel "The Corrections" being the apparent catalyst that caused Oprah to re-think her book-list. The following is a review I wrote of the book:

====================================
Disappointing. January 25, 2002
I read "The Corrections" because it was an Oprah selection, but, like so many of her picks, the novel was just dark and depressing and gave me an overall feeling of hopelessness. The family dynamics were interesting and I found myself wanting to learn how the family members' lives played out, but Franzen really fell short, in my opinion, in many ways. I felt that after the author had spent so much time/so many pages describing mundane events in the characters' lives in excruciating detail, he could at least devote a little more attention to describing the later years of the characters; he just sort of glossed over huge periods of time by the end of the novel.

Learning about various aspects of dementia was fairly interesting, but I found the account of the protagonist's "battle" with a turd to be just too far-out and, frankly, disgusting. In fact, I read that passage to my father as we drove on a vacation together, and he actually told me to QUIT READING aloud to him. He simply couldn't stand any more. Now, my Dad is a senior citizen, but he has excellent taste in books, and he wouldn't have spent the time I did on "The Corrections." That's not to say that I don't have discriminating tastes; I like to think that I do. I'm just unwilling to give up on a book. I kept reading, waiting for the novel to improve; it just didn't deliver.

I heard a little about the furor over the author refusing to appear on Oprah's show. Did she slap her corporate logo and accompanying endorsement onto the book without even asking the author? If is that what happened, it is understandable that Franzen would be more than a little disconcerted. After reading "The Corrections," I can't understand what made Oprah think it was such a terrific read; I just didn't enjoy it, and I didn't really learn any important life-lessons from the novel. I hated all the characters in the book, and I almost never experience that with a book. I can almost always find something good about somebody; Franzen made that task extremely difficult.

Car54

Wednesday, April 10, 2002 - 3:59 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Max, I work in the book business, and it is certainly going to change things. After the first year of her club, a publisher's rep would come in, and literally sell us a book with no title or author or info....simply with the info that it would be an "Oprah Title". We would get an ISBN number and a price, and would put the book in the computer with that info only... the book had very little to do with it...it was about the Oprah stamp.

Marysafan

Saturday, April 13, 2002 - 5:40 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
I jumped in with The Book of Ruth...and kept up through 1999. Then a friend of mine suggested (make that insisted) that I read "Far Pavillions" which she claimed was the best book she ever read. I got behind and read several more of Oprah's selections, but I no longer read them with the rest of the country.

I found many of her selections to be dark and depressing, so mixing them in with other genre worked well for me. I am in the process of collecting them all, and need 16 more books to complete the set. I am currently going the ebay route.

I appreciated having someone reccommend books to me. Otherwise, I have a tendency to get in a rut. At least this way, I broadened my horizons a little. I will miss her endorsements.

Car54

Monday, April 15, 2002 - 11:57 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Marysafan, there is going to be some sort of monthly book program on the Today show.

There is a brief article in this week's People about Oprah ending hers and there is a reference that Today is going to begin a monthly feature to hilight new books- they are going to have popular authors make recommendations.

Marysafan

Tuesday, April 16, 2002 - 10:16 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Great news! when you live in a farmhouse just outside a town that has a population of 400....you are pretty much out of the loop!

I will definitely check out the Today Show's offerings. Thanks for the heads up!

(NO...we don't farm...I just fell in love with the house!)

Car54

Tuesday, April 16, 2002 - 1:11 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Do you ever go read the reviews at Amazon.com? I do, and I usually find them very interesting and helpful

Marysafan

Tuesday, April 16, 2002 - 1:58 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Yes..I do...that's where I first saw "The Red Tent" and "The Girl with the Pearl Earring". Whatever happened to those lists of favorites that people used to make....I spent hours and hours looking at those....you should see my "wish list"...lol!

Sia

Monday, June 17, 2002 - 10:13 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
I FINALLY finished "Sula." Took me forever; I just couldn't get into that book. When I decided to just READ the dumb thing, it didn't take long at all. I finally got a good start on it during a long car-trip this weekend. I wasn't impressed with the book. At least it wasn't as hideously depressing as some of Oprah's other picks. Well, actually, it WAS depressing. Anyone else want to share impressions of "Sula?" Anyone learn a life-changing lesson from it? (Maybe, "Don't jump off a cliff just 'because everyone else is'" or something like that! LOL)

Marysafan

Tuesday, June 18, 2002 - 8:46 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Oh Sia! I loved your take on that. I haven't read sula yet. In fact it is one of only three that I haven't got yet. I am still waiting to find the right price on Sula, Stolen Lives and teh Corrections. I can be patient...I have a boatload of books that I have purchased recently, so I am in no hurry. I will complete the collection eventually.

Four Toni Morrison books...and not one Margaret Atwood! Geez!

Lauword

Tuesday, July 30, 2002 - 7:21 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
I stopped after Black and Blue and that was even pushing it. I was tired of being depressed after every read. I kept thinking Oprah must be waiting to brighten things up, but it never came. The only one I really enjoyed was She's Come Undone. While I was reading it, I thought that I hated it but by the time it ended, I was crying because I wanted more.