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EspañolOPRAH'S BOOK CLUB
'Oprah's Book Club' is a book club segment of the American talk show ''The Oprah Winfrey Show'', highlighting books chosen by host Oprah Winfrey. Winfrey started the book club in 1996 by selecting a new book each month. Because of the book club's wide popularity, many obscure titles have become very popular bestsellers, increasing sales by as many as a million copies at the height of the book club's popularity; this occurrence is known colloquially as the 'Oprah effect'.
In 2002, Winfrey suspended the book club and revived it the following year, with the format shifted. In the new format, Winfrey would no longer be selecting a new book each month, but would instead select books on a more limited basis. Winfrey also began to focus on classic works of literature starting with the summer selection of ''East of Eden''. In September 2005, Winfrey announced she would be opening the book club up to a wide range of titles and genres, including non-fiction and memoir.
Recently, Winfrey returned to fiction with her selection of ''The Road'' by Cormac McCarthy. Shortly after this selection, ''The Road'' was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Winfrey conducted the first ever television interview with McCarthy, a famously reclusive author, on June 5, 2007. On that same day, Winfrey revealed Middlesex (novel) by Jeffrey Eugenides as her 2007 Summer Selection.
In ''Reading with Oprah: The Book Club That Changed America'', Kathleen Rooney describes Winfrey as "a serious American intellectual who pioneered the use of electronic media, specifically television and the Internet, to take reading – a decidedly non-technological and highly individual act – and highlight its social elements and uses in such a way to motivate millions of erstwhile non-readers to pick up books."
Business Week stated:
Many literature critics have criticized Winfrey's book selections as overly sentimental. The most notable of these criticisms came from Jonathan Franzen, whose book ''The Corrections'' was selected in 2001. After the announcement was made, he expressed distaste with being in the company of other Oprah's Book Club authors, saying in an interview that Winfrey had "picked some good books, but she's picked enough schmaltzy, one-dimensional ones that I cringe, myself, even though I think she's really smart and she's really fighting the good fight."[2] Oprah suspended the club shortly after Franzen's criticism.
In late 2005 and early 2006, Oprah's Book Club was again in the news. Winfrey selected James Frey's ''A Million Little Pieces'' for the September 2005 selection. ''Pieces'' is a book billed as a memoir – a true account of Frey's life as an alcoholic, drug addict and criminal. But critics soon questioned the validity of Frey's supposedly true account, especially regarding his treatment while in a rehabilitation facility and his stories of time spent in jail. Initially, Frey convinced Larry King that the embellishments in his book were part of any literary memoir and Winfrey encouraged debate about how creative non-fiction should be classified, and cited the inspirational impact Frey's work has had on so many of her viewers. But as more accusations against the book continued to surface, Winfrey invited Frey on the show, to find out directly from him whether he had lied to her and her viewers. During a heated live televised debate, Winfrey forced Frey to admit that he had indeed lied about spending time in jail, and that he had no idea whether he had two root canals or not, despite devoting several pages to describing them. Winfrey then brought out Frey's publisher Nan Talese to defend her decision to classify the book as a memoir, and forced Telese to admit that she had done nothing to check the book's veracity, despite the fact that her representatives had assured Winfrey's staff that the book was indeed non-fiction and described it as "brutally honest" in a press release.
The media feasted over the televised showdown. David Carr of the New York Times wrote: "Both Mr. Frey and Ms. Talese were snapped in two like dry winter twigs."[3] New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd praised the show, saying, "It was a huge relief, after our long national slide into untruth and no consequences, into Swift boating and swift bucks, into W.'s delusion and denial, to see the Empress of Empathy icily hold someone accountable for lying,"[4] and the Washington Post’s Richard Cohen was so impressed by the confrontation that he crowned Winfrey "Mensch of the Year".[5]
This incident was parodied by South Park in 2006. The episode, entitled A Million Little Fibers, features the character Towelie who writes a memoir but then changes the word "towel" to "person" in order to sell his book. Not surprisingly, the episode deviates from the actual outcome.
★ September 1996 The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard
★ October 1996 Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
★ November 1996 The Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton
★ December 1996 She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb
★ February 1997 Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi
★ April 1997 The Rapture of Canaan by Sheri Reynolds
★ May 1997 The Heart of a Woman by Maya Angelou
★ June 1997 Songs In Ordinary Time by Mary McGarry Morris
★ September 1997 The Meanest Thing To Say by Bill Cosby
★ September 1997 A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines
★ October 1997 A Virtuous Woman by Kaye Gibbons
★ October 1997 Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons
★ December 1997 The Treasure Hunt by Bill Cosby
★ December 1997 The Best Way to Play by Bill Cosby
★ January 1998 Paradise by Toni Morrison
★ March 1998 Here on Earth by Alice Hoffman
★ April 1998 Black and Blue by Anna Quindlen
★ May 1998 Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat
★ September 1998 What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day by Pearl Cleage
★ October 1998 Midwives by Chris Bohjalian
★ December 1998 Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts
★ January 1999 Jewel by Bret Lott
★ February 1999 The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
★ March 1999 The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve
★ April 1999 I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb
★ May 1999 White Oleander by Janet Fitch
★ June 1999 Mother of Pearl by Melinda Haynes
★ September 1999 Tara Road by Maeve Binchy
★ October 1999 The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
★ November 1999 Vinegar Hill by A. Manette Ansay
★ December 1999 A Map of the World by Jane Hamilton
★ January 2000 Gap Creek by Robert Morgan
★ February 2000 Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
★ March 2000 Back Roads by Tawni O'Dell
★ April 2000 The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
★ May 2000 While I Was Gone by Sue Miller
★ June 2000 River, Cross My Heart by Breena Clarke
★ August 2000 Open House by Elizabeth Berg
★ September 2000 Drowning Ruth by Christina Schwarz
★ November 2000 House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III
★ January 2001 We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates
★ March 2001 Icy Sparks by Gwyn Hyman Rubio
★ May 2001 by Malika Oufkir
★ June 2001 Cane River by Lalita Tademy
★ September 2001 The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
★ November 2001 A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
★ January 2002 Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald
★ April 2002 Sula by Toni Morrison
★ June 2003 East of Eden by John Steinbeck
★ September 2003 Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton
★ January 2004 One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
★ April 2004 The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
★ May 2004 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
★ September 2004 The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
★ June 2005 The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, and Light in August, by William Faulkner
★ September 2005 A Million Little Pieces by James Frey
★ January 2006 Night by Elie Wiesel
★ January 2007 by Sidney Poitier
★ March 2007 The Road by Cormac McCarthy
★ June 2007 Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
★ September 2007 TBA
1. Business Week - Why Oprah Opens Readers' Wallets
2. Powells.com Interviews - Jonathan Franzen
3. New York Times - How Oprahness Trumped Truthiness
4. The New York Times - Oprah's Bunk Club
5. TIME.com: Tuned In - TV Blog Archives - Oprah Clarifies Her Position: Truth, Good. Embarrassing Oprah, Very Bad
★ Oprah Winfrey and the Glamour of Misery: An Essay on Popular Culture, Illouz, Eva, , , Columbia University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-231-11813-9
★ Reading with Oprah: The Book Club That Changed America, Rooney, Kathleen, , , University of Arkansas Press, 2005, ISBN 1-55728-782-1
★ Oprah's Book Club
★ Book Of The Month Club
★ Oprah Book Club Archive
In 2002, Winfrey suspended the book club and revived it the following year, with the format shifted. In the new format, Winfrey would no longer be selecting a new book each month, but would instead select books on a more limited basis. Winfrey also began to focus on classic works of literature starting with the summer selection of ''East of Eden''. In September 2005, Winfrey announced she would be opening the book club up to a wide range of titles and genres, including non-fiction and memoir.
Recently, Winfrey returned to fiction with her selection of ''The Road'' by Cormac McCarthy. Shortly after this selection, ''The Road'' was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Winfrey conducted the first ever television interview with McCarthy, a famously reclusive author, on June 5, 2007. On that same day, Winfrey revealed Middlesex (novel) by Jeffrey Eugenides as her 2007 Summer Selection.
| Contents |
| Influence |
| Controversies |
| Oprah's Book Club Selections |
| References |
| External links |
Influence
In ''Reading with Oprah: The Book Club That Changed America'', Kathleen Rooney describes Winfrey as "a serious American intellectual who pioneered the use of electronic media, specifically television and the Internet, to take reading – a decidedly non-technological and highly individual act – and highlight its social elements and uses in such a way to motivate millions of erstwhile non-readers to pick up books."
Business Week stated:
Perhaps the most astonishing aspect of the Oprah phenomenon is how outsized her power is compared with that of other market movers. Some observers suggest that Jon Stewart of Comedy Central's The Daily Show could be No. 2. Other proven arm-twisters include Fox News's Sean Hannity, National Public Radio's Terry Gross, radio personality Don Imus, and CBS' 60 Minutes. But no one comes close to Oprah's clout: Publishers estimate that her power to sell a book is anywhere from 20 to 100 times that of any other media personality.[1]
Controversies
Many literature critics have criticized Winfrey's book selections as overly sentimental. The most notable of these criticisms came from Jonathan Franzen, whose book ''The Corrections'' was selected in 2001. After the announcement was made, he expressed distaste with being in the company of other Oprah's Book Club authors, saying in an interview that Winfrey had "picked some good books, but she's picked enough schmaltzy, one-dimensional ones that I cringe, myself, even though I think she's really smart and she's really fighting the good fight."[2] Oprah suspended the club shortly after Franzen's criticism.
In late 2005 and early 2006, Oprah's Book Club was again in the news. Winfrey selected James Frey's ''A Million Little Pieces'' for the September 2005 selection. ''Pieces'' is a book billed as a memoir – a true account of Frey's life as an alcoholic, drug addict and criminal. But critics soon questioned the validity of Frey's supposedly true account, especially regarding his treatment while in a rehabilitation facility and his stories of time spent in jail. Initially, Frey convinced Larry King that the embellishments in his book were part of any literary memoir and Winfrey encouraged debate about how creative non-fiction should be classified, and cited the inspirational impact Frey's work has had on so many of her viewers. But as more accusations against the book continued to surface, Winfrey invited Frey on the show, to find out directly from him whether he had lied to her and her viewers. During a heated live televised debate, Winfrey forced Frey to admit that he had indeed lied about spending time in jail, and that he had no idea whether he had two root canals or not, despite devoting several pages to describing them. Winfrey then brought out Frey's publisher Nan Talese to defend her decision to classify the book as a memoir, and forced Telese to admit that she had done nothing to check the book's veracity, despite the fact that her representatives had assured Winfrey's staff that the book was indeed non-fiction and described it as "brutally honest" in a press release.
The media feasted over the televised showdown. David Carr of the New York Times wrote: "Both Mr. Frey and Ms. Talese were snapped in two like dry winter twigs."[3] New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd praised the show, saying, "It was a huge relief, after our long national slide into untruth and no consequences, into Swift boating and swift bucks, into W.'s delusion and denial, to see the Empress of Empathy icily hold someone accountable for lying,"[4] and the Washington Post’s Richard Cohen was so impressed by the confrontation that he crowned Winfrey "Mensch of the Year".[5]
This incident was parodied by South Park in 2006. The episode, entitled A Million Little Fibers, features the character Towelie who writes a memoir but then changes the word "towel" to "person" in order to sell his book. Not surprisingly, the episode deviates from the actual outcome.
Oprah's Book Club Selections
★ September 1996 The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard
★ October 1996 Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
★ November 1996 The Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton
★ December 1996 She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb
★ February 1997 Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi
★ April 1997 The Rapture of Canaan by Sheri Reynolds
★ May 1997 The Heart of a Woman by Maya Angelou
★ June 1997 Songs In Ordinary Time by Mary McGarry Morris
★ September 1997 The Meanest Thing To Say by Bill Cosby
★ September 1997 A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines
★ October 1997 A Virtuous Woman by Kaye Gibbons
★ October 1997 Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons
★ December 1997 The Treasure Hunt by Bill Cosby
★ December 1997 The Best Way to Play by Bill Cosby
★ January 1998 Paradise by Toni Morrison
★ March 1998 Here on Earth by Alice Hoffman
★ April 1998 Black and Blue by Anna Quindlen
★ May 1998 Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat
★ September 1998 What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day by Pearl Cleage
★ October 1998 Midwives by Chris Bohjalian
★ December 1998 Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts
★ January 1999 Jewel by Bret Lott
★ February 1999 The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
★ March 1999 The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve
★ April 1999 I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb
★ May 1999 White Oleander by Janet Fitch
★ June 1999 Mother of Pearl by Melinda Haynes
★ September 1999 Tara Road by Maeve Binchy
★ October 1999 The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
★ November 1999 Vinegar Hill by A. Manette Ansay
★ December 1999 A Map of the World by Jane Hamilton
★ January 2000 Gap Creek by Robert Morgan
★ February 2000 Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
★ March 2000 Back Roads by Tawni O'Dell
★ April 2000 The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
★ May 2000 While I Was Gone by Sue Miller
★ June 2000 River, Cross My Heart by Breena Clarke
★ August 2000 Open House by Elizabeth Berg
★ September 2000 Drowning Ruth by Christina Schwarz
★ November 2000 House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III
★ January 2001 We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates
★ March 2001 Icy Sparks by Gwyn Hyman Rubio
★ May 2001 by Malika Oufkir
★ June 2001 Cane River by Lalita Tademy
★ September 2001 The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
★ November 2001 A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
★ January 2002 Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald
★ April 2002 Sula by Toni Morrison
★ June 2003 East of Eden by John Steinbeck
★ September 2003 Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton
★ January 2004 One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
★ April 2004 The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
★ May 2004 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
★ September 2004 The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
★ June 2005 The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, and Light in August, by William Faulkner
★ September 2005 A Million Little Pieces by James Frey
★ January 2006 Night by Elie Wiesel
★ January 2007 by Sidney Poitier
★ March 2007 The Road by Cormac McCarthy
★ June 2007 Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
★ September 2007 TBA
References
1. Business Week - Why Oprah Opens Readers' Wallets
2. Powells.com Interviews - Jonathan Franzen
3. New York Times - How Oprahness Trumped Truthiness
4. The New York Times - Oprah's Bunk Club
5. TIME.com: Tuned In - TV Blog Archives - Oprah Clarifies Her Position: Truth, Good. Embarrassing Oprah, Very Bad
★ Oprah Winfrey and the Glamour of Misery: An Essay on Popular Culture, Illouz, Eva, , , Columbia University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-231-11813-9
★ Reading with Oprah: The Book Club That Changed America, Rooney, Kathleen, , , University of Arkansas Press, 2005, ISBN 1-55728-782-1
External links
★ Oprah's Book Club
★ Book Of The Month Club
★ Oprah Book Club Archive
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