Thursday, June 19, 2003
HOLY CRAP: Oprah Winfrey revives her book club, this time dealing with the "classics" (read (by me, anyway): dead writers who won't pull a Franzen on her), and the first book she chooses this time is John Steinbeck's East of Eden, definitely a good start. I never read Eden, but Of Mice and Men was one of the select English class novels that I managed to finish, and it definitely stuck with me.
Anyway, today I hear the remarkable news that thanks to Her O-ness's blessing, Eden is number TWO on the list of Amazon.com bestselling books, right behind the new Harry Potter book. Barnes and Noble's online store has it at #6, which is still remarkable for a book 50 years old. It's doubly remarkable because Oprah, who knows how to play to her crowd, often picked books with sympathetic female characters, and the strongest female character in this book is an "evil and manipulative prostitute" (so sez the Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature).
If I buy this one, though, I'll be looking for a copy that doesn't say "THE BOOK THAT BROUGHT OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB BACK" on the cover. I'd like to remember Steinbeck for a lot of reasons, but this isn't one of 'em.
(EDIT @ 10:39am: it turns out I was looking at the wrong place in the B&N website, since the "Oprah" edition actually is at #2; the "centennial edition" is the one at #6, right behind (surprise, surprise) the CD version of Order of the Phoenix. Among all the B&N mishmash, four of their top 10 are various editions of Phoenix, while four different editions of Eden are in the top 20. It definitely makes me wonder how many copies of all the editions combined will end up being sold. If you can't tell, I find these types of sales chart vagaries fascinating; if you find them boring...well, you just read 'em anyway, sucker.)
Anyway, today I hear the remarkable news that thanks to Her O-ness's blessing, Eden is number TWO on the list of Amazon.com bestselling books, right behind the new Harry Potter book. Barnes and Noble's online store has it at #6, which is still remarkable for a book 50 years old. It's doubly remarkable because Oprah, who knows how to play to her crowd, often picked books with sympathetic female characters, and the strongest female character in this book is an "evil and manipulative prostitute" (so sez the Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature).
If I buy this one, though, I'll be looking for a copy that doesn't say "THE BOOK THAT BROUGHT OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB BACK" on the cover. I'd like to remember Steinbeck for a lot of reasons, but this isn't one of 'em.
(EDIT @ 10:39am: it turns out I was looking at the wrong place in the B&N website, since the "Oprah" edition actually is at #2; the "centennial edition" is the one at #6, right behind (surprise, surprise) the CD version of Order of the Phoenix. Among all the B&N mishmash, four of their top 10 are various editions of Phoenix, while four different editions of Eden are in the top 20. It definitely makes me wonder how many copies of all the editions combined will end up being sold. If you can't tell, I find these types of sales chart vagaries fascinating; if you find them boring...well, you just read 'em anyway, sucker.)
|| Eric 10:14 AM#
