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A review by balletbookworm
Reading with Oprah: The Book Club That Changed America by Kathleen Rooney
4.0
A fairly balanced analysis of the Oprah's Book Club phenomenon. Rooney examines the high- vs. low-brow debate when evaluating the criticisms launched at the first incarnation of the book club (known as OBC I). She also brings the matter of "truthiness" to the table when looking at the James Frey debacle and how it was handled far differently than the dust-up with Jonathan Franzen. Rooney has a nice style, academic but not boringly so, and she did a great job taking the OBC through its various stages. I was struck by one fact Rooney points out in her criticism that the OBC I discussions tended toward the vapid and overly positive - the audience members at the bookclub taping Rooney attended were not allowed to bring anything into the studio with them, not even the book under discussion (Fall on Your Knees).
I've never been an OBC devotee which is why I wanted to read Rooney's book. I don't really "get" the massiveness of the OBC phenomenon and I was hoping Rooney could shed some light on that (she does). In truth, I have never seen an entire episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show (I watched most of an episode dealing with teen girls and bullies/abuse and the author of Queen Bees and Wannabes was a guest, I think). I am most definitely not Oprah's target audience (I'm not home during the day and don't record daytime TV for later viewing) and really am entirely unaffected by Oprah's magic recommendations. I do admire what Oprah did for reading, I really do - to get so many people to at least purchase a book when adult literacy wan't looking good is an admirable thing. I think on the whole most of the OBC title picks were made up of good books that were overtly readable.
Where Oprah has always driven me nuts is that somehow people turn into sheep when she makes a recommendation - they don't come to the store asking for Faulkner, Steinbeck, Morrison, or McCarthy, they come in asking for "Oprah's book." Come on, it has a title and an author, Oprah didn't write it, and the idea that people blindly start reading the same title en masse has always struck me as a little offputting. So I always made the conscious decision to NOT read a book because Oprah said it was good. I spent at least an hour with a hairdryer peeling the Oprah sticker off The Road (that thing had sticky glue) because I had been planning to buy it on release in paperback and didn't want to look like a sheep. I'm happy to say that my taste overlaps a bit with Oprah (I've read 12 picks and several others have been in my TBR longlist for a while), but she's not my book guru.
Pretty sure Kat is. :P
I've never been an OBC devotee which is why I wanted to read Rooney's book. I don't really "get" the massiveness of the OBC phenomenon and I was hoping Rooney could shed some light on that (she does). In truth, I have never seen an entire episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show (I watched most of an episode dealing with teen girls and bullies/abuse and the author of Queen Bees and Wannabes was a guest, I think). I am most definitely not Oprah's target audience (I'm not home during the day and don't record daytime TV for later viewing) and really am entirely unaffected by Oprah's magic recommendations. I do admire what Oprah did for reading, I really do - to get so many people to at least purchase a book when adult literacy wan't looking good is an admirable thing. I think on the whole most of the OBC title picks were made up of good books that were overtly readable.
Where Oprah has always driven me nuts is that somehow people turn into sheep when she makes a recommendation - they don't come to the store asking for Faulkner, Steinbeck, Morrison, or McCarthy, they come in asking for "Oprah's book." Come on, it has a title and an author, Oprah didn't write it, and the idea that people blindly start reading the same title en masse has always struck me as a little offputting. So I always made the conscious decision to NOT read a book because Oprah said it was good. I spent at least an hour with a hairdryer peeling the Oprah sticker off The Road (that thing had sticky glue) because I had been planning to buy it on release in paperback and didn't want to look like a sheep. I'm happy to say that my taste overlaps a bit with Oprah (I've read 12 picks and several others have been in my TBR longlist for a while), but she's not my book guru.
Pretty sure Kat is. :P