I think she just has a huge ego. Her book club, I couldn’t care less about.
I don’t like how she won’t let her guests finish a sentence. A typical conversation on her show goes something like this:
Guest: Sometimes I feel–
Oprah:–a little fat?
Guest: No. Sometimes I feel–
Oprah: --a little skinny?
Guest: No. Sometimes I feel–
Oprah: --like you just want to kill someone?
Guest: NO! Sometimes I feel like I can’t finish a freakin’ sentence!
And then she’s got that fake-happiness about her. She says something nice and happy but meaningless and her whole audience bursts into mindless applause. And that whole “finding your Spirit” stuff is creepy. You don’t hear anyone ever talking about finding their “spirit” unless they’re on the Oprah Show.
Lastly, Oprah gets on my nerves because she doesn’t talk about things that interest me. I can’t related to her, can’t relate to the topics on her show, and I can’t relate to the people in her audience. I liked her better when she had trashier topics like Lesbians Who Think They’re From Outer Space or Devil Worshippers in Interracial Relationships. I could relate to stuff like that.
YES! monstro, you got it. She’s glurge in the flesh.
I, for one, am not unhappy to hear it going by the wayside. I ordinarily wouldn’t have cared at all what books she chose for her book club. They generally didn’t appear to be the type of book in which I would be interested, but I was free to disregard her choices. They seemed to be appropriate for her core audience, of which I was not a member, so I simply disregarded it.
Until it infected my book club.
I run a monthly book club. There are currently six of us, though the number changes somewhat due to schedules, people moving, etc., but 6 seems to be pretty steady. We rotate book choices; it being my book club, I get to choose four books a year (every third month) and the other months rotate among active members. Members must have read a book completely before recommending it. New members are placed last in the rotation, meaning it is usually seven to eight months before a new member gets to choose the book.
A while back, one woman invited her cousin “Sheila” to join. She attended our first three meetings, and insisted that she get to choose the next book (she apparently either didn’t understand the rotation system or didn’t care to wait her turn). The book was The Deep End of the Ocean, and she gave a very enthusastic book talk about it. The story sounded similar to a pair of books we had read the year before, The Face on the Milk Carton and Whatever Happened to Janie, young adult books that one of the mothers in our group had read on suggestion of her daughter, and which were surprisingly good. In her presentation the next month, she presented some observations concerning the book that seemed much more sophisticated than her usualy contribution. When I and others disagreed with some of her points (which happens at every meeting) she got flustered, was unable to support her pov very well, and kept repeating the same few observations. She seemed offended that the group as a whole thought the book was competently composed, but emotionally overwrought and had a fatal flaw in that it told the wrong character’s story. She was very offended that we all thought the ya books were better. I chalked it up to it being her first time leading the discussion.
The next month, she showed up with a videotape and a smug look on her face. The tape was of an Oprah episode, and (in her mind) proved her right because everything she had been saying was confirmed by this videotape. I pointed out that A: It wasn’t a contest to determine who was right, it was a chance to share a book you loved with other book lovers, B: Though using the Oprah discussion as one source of information was certainly appropriate, accepting everything anyone said on the show (including the author) as gospel left little room for discussion, and C: Last month’s book discussion was over.
Eight months later, Sheila’s turn comes up again, and she chooses I Know This Much is True. It’s a bit long at almost 1000 pages for a monthly book club, but one policy is that short of porn or bodice rippers (which are soft-core porn anyway), the leader may choose any book. Her presentation and the subsequent discussion made it clear that she hadn’t actually read the book before recommending it, nor had she finished it before the club meeting, and that she again lifted her presentation nearly entirely from the Oprah show, though she didn’t try to hide it this time. She again seemed to take personal offense at any criticism of the book (general concensus–well done for a tv-movie-of-the-week type story, but at least a third too long and a bit over the top at times), and this time quoted the Oprah show often as if that were incontravertible proof that she was correct. She quit in a huff, and her cousin quit three months later, apparently out of loyalty to Sheila.
We made it a rule to ban any book on Oprah’s list, and have had two potential members choose not to participate if they have to find a book on their own rather than let some tv show host do their thinking for them.
No, I’m not unhappy to see it go away.
Our current book (my pick this month): Roots. It’s my fifth time through, everyone else’s first.
P.S. IMO, watching a tv program in which others discuss a book you’ve read is not participating in a book club. If you cannot share your ideas with the other “members”, it isn’t a book club.
Hehehe, that’s a funny story, Number Six.
Number Six, that reminds me of sixth grade English when I busted a fellow student, during the aftermath of his book report, in front of the whole class. It was obvious to me that he was summarizing the plot of the made-for-TV version of Freaky Friday (Jodie Foster starred - how could you NOT watch?) rather than the book. Sure I watched lots of TV, but I really didn’t like non-readers; still don’t trust them to this day. The teacher gave him an F.
The rush of superiority I felt quickly resolved itself into the realization that I’m a friggin’ dweeb.
sigh I read two of the Oprah books - “She’s Come Undone” and “The Reader”.
“She’s Come Undone” was good, but mostly brain candy - it didn’t cause you to think, just commiserate with this “poor woman”. Feel fat sometimes? Hey, she had it worse. Raped at age 13? Yep, that’s in there, too.
“The Reader” was an awesome book, but I dread to think what they said about it on the show. I saw it as less of a love-story-gone-awry and more of a postwar-Germany-coming-to-terms-with-things kind of book, although I didn’t like the assumption that perhaps people commited the crimes they did in the Third Reich solely out of ignorance.
I suspect she may be ending it due to the whole Jonathan Franzen debacle. Her pride was obviously hurt, and perhaps she didn’t want to risk another author gasp! refusing to put her sticker on their book.
Am I the only one who just loves the mental image of Oprah, intently perusing her latest ratings information, looking contemplatively over at her bookshelves, and then picking up the phone, calling the Powers That Be, and saying, “You know what? Fuck it.”
I’m relating to her on a whole new, more appreciative level now.
k
While I have loathed Oprah for years, as an English teacher I must say that her book club has led many non-readers to take on a more active reading lifestyle. Life-changing books such as The Bridges of Madison County, A Lesson Before Dying, Song of Solomon, and Beloved became best sellers in large part due to her.
I’ve never read a book simply because it was one of hers, but I’ve read books that happened to be, and I must say that I can appreciate what she was trying to do.
I’m disappointed it’s coming to an end, but honestly, how many books out there can compare with A Lesson Before Dying et al?
See, I think Wally Lamb is the best male writer who’s written from a female perspective since D.H. Lawrence. I think She’s Come Undone is a phenomenal book. shrug
My goodness, I can’t believe this topic is being done again.
Your opinion of her is simply that - your opinion. If you don’t like her because of her voice or because she cuts guests off or whatever - can’t you simply accept that as your opinion? No, it has to be a moral rectitude - “She LIED! She is EVIL!” If you don’t like her, for whatever reason, fine - but don’t take the moral high ground and wax superior about your superior refined reading tastes because it really is just your opinion.
I have read many of the Oprah book picks, and I liked most of them. Several I had read before she picked them, and re-read again for the hell of it. I resent that I am forced to defend my reading skills based on that. I have read more books at 21 than anyone I have ever encountered in real life, and I could hold my own in a book discussion with anyone on this board. You want to discuss Faulker - I’ve read ALL of his books for an English Honors seminar. Morrison - I’d read every one of her books by the time I was 16, and read Paradise as soon as it came out. You want to argue about Huck Finn - like every other college kid, I’ve read it about twenty times in the past ten years. And I’m not in the English Honors Program, I’m not recieving a full scholarship to study Wordsworth in England in this summer, I’m not getting a research grant for my Honors thesis on Wordsworth and Coleridge - because I’m some sort of literature idiot incapable of analyzing highbrow works.
I despise you people who disguise your shrunken egos with overblown testaments to the inferiority of a woman who was just trying to get people to read more. I cannot comprehend how you would impugn someone for that. And you’re no better than dirt in my eyes if you try to cover up your dislike of someone with some ridiculous moral superiority.
Well, if you dislike her show so much, why do you watch it?
And I don’t think she was one who did “Lesbians Who Think They’re From Outer Space” -type topics. She was always a talk show, not a trashy tabloid show. That’s Sally Jessy Rapheal and Jenny Jones.
And the book thing…geez, it’s one person’s opinion. I like a book, but you don’t. So what?
Why so much hatred for the books she picks? It’s not like she was holding a gun to your head and making you read them.
And those of you slamming her books…have any of you actually read any of them? I can see where they might not appeal to everyone, but not every genre appeals to every person.