In the summer, I visited the Book Club of California in downtown San Francisco.
One hundred years old in 2012, the Book Club is a haven for bibliophiles and has also published many beautiful books over the decades.
Our latest feature sheds light on the Club’s mission and its history, includes a video tour and showcases 25 of its finest publications.
My Publishers Lunch newsletter tells me how Nielsen Bookscan has tracked the sales of Oprah’s Book Club selections over the past 10 years:
Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth – 3.37 million copies sold
James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces – 2.7 million copies sold
Elie Wiesel’s Night – 2.01 million copies sold
Cormac McCarthy’s The Road -1.385 million copies sold
Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations – 95,000 copies sold
Behold the power of Oprah, but what a shame more people didn’t read Dickens.
I recommend visiting the Lisa Simpson Book Club and catching up on all those literary references and gags from The Simpsons.
“Well, I think we should invest in a set of The Great Books Of Western Civilization. Look at this ad from The New Republic For Kids: Each month, a new classic will be delivered to our door. Paradise Regained, Martin Cheselwitt or Herman Melville’s twin-classics Omoo and Typee.”
Who do you think comes best out of this little legal tussle? LibraryThing.com or a company called American Reading? LibraryThing’s response made me laugh.
Oh the horror! If you look up towards the sky in Manhattan right now, you will see some very sad people dotted along the ever-so-high ledges of those massive media corporation buildings.
Yes, just when book publishers thought life could not get any worse comes the news that Oprah Winfrey, the publisher’s best friend, will shutdown her daytime talk show in 2011. All this comes on the heels of the rise of e-books, the Kindle, the Nook, the Sony e-thingy, and the demise of book coverage in the mainstream US media.
So what will be the ultimate go-to source for bookselling when Oprah pulls the plug?
Frankly, there isn’t another ‘superpower of recommendation’ like the Big O, who has the book club selections and features countless authors on the show. Publishers will have to target multiple media sources, including the unofficial media of blogs and social networking sites, and hope many small hits will create a bestseller.
Somehow, I think Oprah loves her literature and that she’s going to remain linked to books one way or another. Odd how this announcement comes very soon after her recent interviews with Stephenie Meyer and Sarah Palin? Perhaps these two ladies were the straws that broke the camel’s back? (Oprah’s lawyers should note I am not actually saying Oprah is a dromedary) I’d probably be ready to pack it in after discussing vampires and foreign policy respectively with those two.
The Inkwell Bookstore in Falmouth, Massachusetts, has an excellent blog. Their post on 10 Reasons Why Book Club is like Church is very funny.
10. Half the participants are lonely old women, the other half are just there for the wine.
9. There’s always one member who not only falls asleep, they snore.
8. Miss a few meetings, and they make you feel like you’re going to Hell.
7. When interpretations vary, arguments follow.
6. Audible farts are inexplicably hilarious.
5. New members = potential mates.
4. No one’s ever finished the book/The Book.
3. Donations are strongly encouraged, willfully withheld.
2. You’re too chickensh*t to admit that you thought the book/The Book was boring.
1. They keep promising you an author appearance, but in the end…nope.
Editor of O Magazine Gayle King revealed their top4 picks from Oprah’s Summer Reading List:
Provenance is the extraordinary narrative of one of the most far-reaching and elaborate deceptions in art history. Investigative reporters Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo brilliantly recount the tale of a great con man and unforgettable villain, John Drewe, and his sometimes unwitting accomplices.
Provenance reads like a well-plotted thriller, filled with unforgettable characters and told at a breakneck pace. But this is most certainly not fiction;Provenance is the meticulously researched and captivating account of one of the greatest cons in the history of art forgery.
Complete with romance, heartbreak, swordfights, cannibalism, and thousands of rotting corpses, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies transforms a masterpiece of world literature into something you’d actually want to read.
Gavin has gotten closer than any other writer to the celebrity who has lived in reclusion since 1998. From the Cotton Club’s glory days and the back lots of Hollywood’s biggest studios to the glitzy but bigoted hotels of Las Vegas’s heyday, this behind-the-scenes look at an American icon is as much a story of the limits of the American dream as it is a masterful, ground-breaking biography.
Jonathan Ross’ Twitter-based book club (#wossybookclub) has caused major demand for Jon Ronson’s The Men Who Stare at Goats book from 2005. From surfing around Twitter, it would appear that many bookshops have run out of stock.
AbeBooks.co.uk has many secondhand and new copies but I’m sure they’ll shift pretty quickly.
Ronson’s book is an investigation into the extremes of the psychological warfare used by US Special Forces. It examines the use of the Barney the Dinosaur theme tune, the ultimate torture tactic, on Iraqi prisoners-of-war among other things.
Apparently, future recommendations include Rutu Modan’s graphic novel about a Tel Aviv taxi driver, Exit Wounds, Shalom Auslander’s memoir Foreskin’s Lament, and Leaves of Grass by American poet Walt Whitman.
….was the latest book to be featured in Lost. A Separate Reality is supposed to be non-fiction and tells the story of the author’s apprenticeship under a Yaqui Indian sorcerer, who used plants such as peyote to see the energy of the universe. I can safely say that I will never read this book.
Visit the Lost show’s Book Club.
We need your help in deciding what the Avid Reader Book Club will read during April! Voting is simple – we have a poll open in our Community Forums where you can let us know your choice.
The choices were inspired by our recent feature, Top Ten Funniest Books According to the British.
The nominated books are:
A) Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
Jerome K. Jerome’s comic classic Three Men in a Boat (To say nothing of the Dog!) is unsinkable. One of the most widely read and beloved works of British fiction it has never fallen out of print since it first came out in 1889, but rather has been translated into many languages and even turned into a teleplay by Tom Stoppard.
The most ordinary circumstances turn hilarious as J., an idler who exhibits a “general disinclination to work of any kind,” and his friends journey up the Thames River. Getting into many scrapes along the way, the friends consider “assaulting a policeman” just to have “a night’s lodging in the station-house,” when they get lost, but ultimately reject the proposition, fearful that he would hit them back without locking them up. The real scene stealer, though, is Montmorency, a small fox terrier who appears to be “born with about four times as much original sin in [him] as other dogs are.”
B) My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell 
When the unconventional Durrell family can no longer endure the damp, gray English climate, they do what any sensible family would do: sell their house and relocate to the sunny Greek isle of Corfu. My Family and Other Animals was intended to embrace the natural history of the island but ended up as a delightful account of Durrell’s family’s experiences, from the many eccentric hangers-on to the ceaseless procession of puppies, toads, scorpions, geckoes, ladybugs, glowworms, octopuses, bats, and butterflies into their home.
C) Thank You, Jeeves! by P.G. Wodehouse
Thank You, Jeeves is the first novel to feature the incomparable valet Jeeves and his hapless charge Bertie Wooster – and you’ve hardly started to turn the pages when he resigns over Bertie’s dedicated but somewhat untuneful playing of the banjo. In high dudgeon, Bertie disappears to the country as a guest of his chum Chuffy – only to find his peace shattered by the arrival of his ex-fiancée Pauline Stoker, her formidable father and the eminent loony-doctor Sir Roderick Glossop. When Chuffy falls in love with Pauline and Bertie seems to be caught in flagrante, a situation boils up which only Jeeves (whether employed or not) can simmer down…
Our poll is only open until Wednesday, March 18 so vote soon! We’ll announce the winning book shortly after that date.
Thanks for your help!
During the month of March, the AbeBooks Avid Reader Book Club is discussing Edith Wharton’s 1905 novel, The House of Mirth.
We have a book club page dedicated to The House of Mirth which includes discussion questions, background information on the book and a brief bio of Edith Wharton.
It’s not too late to join in the reading! And don’t forget, you can participate when you want – it’s all online! We’d love to get your thoughts on the book!
I’d always rather fancied being a member of a book club. Surely discussions started with “My book club is reading…” would add an air of sophistication to my less-than-sophisticated demeanor. But as responsibilities and commitments mounted, reality set in – joining a book club would be stressful! What if I didn’t have the time to read the allotted amount before the book club meeting? When would I have time to even attend a meeting?
My dreams seemed dashed.
But alas all is not lost! Along comes the AbeBooks Avid Reader Book Club! There is absolutely no pressure! I (you) can read as much or as little as you’d like and you can choose if and when to join in the discussion on the Community Forums! How fantastic is that? There’s a chance I can come across as slightly sophisticated after all!
The vote for what will be read in March is currently open. But if you’d like to have a say, please vote soon as the poll closes tomorrow night (Wednesday, February 11 – Western Hemisphere).
Ok, this is a little bit of shameless self-promotion as I’ll be hosting the Book Club during March and April while my colleague and regular host, Heather is away. But I would love to have new people join and I know Heather would too.
Joining is really easy and there is no cost to be a member. Just sign up for the newsletter to ensure you get the messages letting you know about upcoming books and when it’s time to vote and then create an account on our Community Forums so that you can join in on the discussion or read what others have to say. (The vote also takes place on the Forums so you’ll need an account for that too.)
The books we’re voting on for March’s read are:
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
Summaries of each of these books are available on our Avid Reader Book Club page.
I hope to “meet” some of you “at” the Book Club! And don’t forget to vote on which book you’d like to read!
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