Perhaps you’re familiar with the Oprah Winfrey Book Club. As I understand, once a month for the past few years, talk show hostess Ophrah Winfrey has recommended a book to her viewers. She has now announced that she’s dropping the Book Club, because of a lack of books “that I feel absolutely compelled to share.”
Now, if I had a tv show watched by millions of people, and knew that my recommendation could (for whatever reason) get lots of people to pick up a book they might never have considered before, I hope I would use that position of influence to good effect. If I didn’t find enough new books “that I feel absolutely compelled to share,” I would try and get my audience to check out the classics. Every American should read Huckleberry Finn; has Oprah ever recommended that? (I don’t know Ms. Winfrey personally, but apparently she likes people to use her first name.) Has she thought of steering her viewers to Thoreau, Dickens, Joyce, Faulkner? For that matter, she’d be doing the world a favor if she could get her core audience to read some good nonfiction, such as The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan.
Keep in mind, we’re talking a book a month. I know Oprah is busy counting her money and stuff, but Jeeze Louise.
[NOTE: Please excuse the lack of cursing, and my failure to mock either Oprah’s obesity, or her presumably ignorant, cud-chewing, couch-wallowing audience. That just wouldn’t be classy.]
Considering the quality of the books and writers she recommended I’m surprised she would run out of them. There seems to be plenty of crappy novels about dysfunctional families to recommend.
Thanks; I didn’t know that. Even so, how hard is it to find one good book a month?
Damnit, I’m just not in a real ranting mood. I probably should have put this in Cafe Society, and asked for suggestions for good new books instead of launching a half-baked attack on a beloved figure in American culture. Just forget I said anything.
Agreed, dropzone. I like pretty much all kinds of books with one notable exception: what Oprah presents. So I’m not terribly upset that she discontinued it, but her reason is pretty darn dumb.
Yes, but it’s possible that even Oprah could make a wrong call at some point and I think she did. Expanding the scope of the book club to include classics is a fine idea!
Yep, she could have easily expanded into nonfiction.
She could have recommended “classics,” and had contemporary scholars in to discuss them. She would have to make sure that the scholars would play well on TV, of course, but there are plenty on English professors to choose from. Huck Finn would be a great choice to do this with–it is a fun and easy read, and it speaks to many contemporary issues.
<wince> As soon as I saw this thread, I thought of that last train wreck. (And most notably my own ill-conceived attempt at humor in it. Yoicks. What the hell was I thinking? Not much, obviously…)
I, too, am surprised at Oprah shutting down her book club. How in the name of Jeebus, with all the volume of printed material coming available on a monthly basis, can you not find one book worthy of the Oprah Seal of Approval? And as previously suggested, switching tracks and recommending ‘classic’ novels would be a great way to suggest quality literature to an audience who otherwise may never have been exposed to it.
I was horrified to find my favorite book of all time (Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison) on Oprah’s list (I believe it was the first book she recommended). I know it’s awful, but I was a snobby college kid at the time, so I felt cheap and dirty knowing that the same people who worship (not just watch–but worship) the woman who is Nails on a Chalkboard Incarnate to me were defiling MY precious book en masse.
But I got over myself.
I still don’t like Oprah, and will not personally miss her book club, but come on–she has to know how much power she wields over her loyal subjects… So for her to say that there are no books out there that she feels compelled to share will likely be construed by her devotees as “There is nothing worth reading out there anymore–go pick up a Harlequin and be done with it.”
I read on the ABC news website recently that the book club episodes are among the lowest in ratings. I think that might have more to do with it than this CRISIS IN MODERN LITERATURE.
The real reason she’s dropping the book club is ratings. Whenever she has a book club show the ratings drop. There’s enough books out there that saying she’s run out of good books is nonsense.
If the ratings were through the roof with these shows, she’d fine more than enough books out there to do 'em.
Not really surprised to hear it, of course, but you’d think that with her emphasis on “charity,” she could see her way clear to suck up some low-rated shows in the interest of the common good (as she sees it). And then she could publicize it and give her public yet one more reason to luuuurve her.
It rather bugs me that she’s used this flimsy excuse. She is essentially slagging all authors and telling her audience there is nothing new worth reading just so she can save face. I’d rather she said something like “There are still some many wonderful books out there but I’m afraid I don’t have the time to run a book club anymore. Please don’t stop reading. I send you, my minions out into the world to start your own bookclubs”
When YOU get a book club, you can do whatever the hell you want with it.
Goodness. If she were to open her book club up to classics, then someone would say she needs to include non-fiction. And if she included non-fiction, someone would say she needs to up it include to picture books. And then it would be children’s books. And then something else.
The drop in ratings may have been what broke the camels back. I’m betting all the whining and complaining from the critics was the main reason she just said “fuck it”.
Which would be a fine reason to stop doing the book club. Saying, “There are no books worth recommending,” is a flat-out lie, and a slap in the face to every struggling author out there puring their soul onto the page while their body starves.
Fuck you, Oprah. Fuck you with a hard-bound edition of the Norton Anthology of English Literature.
