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Reading with Oprah: The Book Club that Changed America
Adored by its fans, deplored by its critics, the Oprah Book Club has been at the center of arguments about cultural authority and literary taste since its inception in 1996. Virtually everyone seems to have an opinion about this monumental institution with its revolutionary and controversial fusion of the literary, the televisual, and the commercial. Reading with Oprah by Kathleen Rooney is the first in-depth look at the phenomenon that is the OBC. Rooney combines extensive research with a lively personal voice and engaging narrative style to untangle the myths and presuppositions surrounding the club, to reveal its complex and far-reaching cultural influence, confronting head-on how the club became a crucible for the heated clash between “high” and “low” literary taste. Comprehensive and up-to-date, the book features a wide survey of recent commentary, and describes why the club closed in 2002, as well as why it resumed almost a year later in 2003, with a new focus on “great books.” Rooney also provides the most extensive analysis yet of the Oprah Winfrey–Jonathan Franzen contretemps. Through her close examination of each of the club’s selected novels, as well as personal interviews and correspondence with OBC authors, Rooney demonstrates that in its tumultuous eight-year history the OBC has occupied a place of prominence unique in the culture that neither its supporters nor detractors have previously given it credit for.
230 pages, Hardcover
First published February 7, 2005
251 people want to read
About the author
Kathleen Rooney
34 books1,347 followersKathleen Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press, a publisher of literary work in hybrid genres, and a founding member of Poems While You Wait, a team of poets and their typewriters who compose commissioned poetry on demand.
She is the author, most recently, of the novels Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk and Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey. Her latest collection Where Are the Snows, winner of the XJ Kennedy Prize, is coming out from Texas Review Press in September 2022. She teaches at DePaul and her next novel, From Dust to Stardust, will be published by Lake Union Press in Fall of 2023.
She is the author, most recently, of the novels Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk and Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey. Her latest collection Where Are the Snows, winner of the XJ Kennedy Prize, is coming out from Texas Review Press in September 2022. She teaches at DePaul and her next novel, From Dust to Stardust, will be published by Lake Union Press in Fall of 2023.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
December 9, 2015
What distinguishes humans from animals? Some say it’s a sense of humour. But I saw two squirrels the other day telling each other jokes and laughing fit to burst. And only yesterday my neighbour told me his dog Claude is getting pretty big on the stand-up circuit. So I don’t think it’s that. I think it’s that some humans would rather die than be caught reading the latest novel by Jodi Picoult. That’s what makes us essentially human.
Kathleen Rooney writes in a very captivating manner, stepping neatly from egg-head observations* into excited girl-fan admissions and from academic rigour to the conversational** . Mostly she’s brisk and witty and negotiates huge cultural controversies with an adroitness I wish I had a quarter of. I was sorry to take my leave of her.
What this book is about is giant issues of sex, class, education and taste all rammed through the concentrating lens of the thing called Oprah’s Book Club – in KR’s words “the reasons behind the cultural unrest surrounding this mother of all book groups”. And what a fascinating knot of complication it is, too.
KR : “it behooves us to try to understand why we, as individuals, experience such powerful inclinations to embrace certain artistic and cultural phenomena while rejecting others.”
Well, let’s see.
PB’S ANATOMY OF ALL THE BOOKS THERE EVER WERE
1)There are highbrow books (which may be good or bad) - Example : Ulysses, good; Finnegans Wake, bad)
2) There are middlebrow books (which may be good or bad) - Example : The Poisonwood Bible, good; The Cider House Rules, bad)
3) There are lowbrow books (which may be good or bad) – example : The Killer Inside me (good); Flesh Gothic (bad)
But hold on…. can those words good and bad be applied to books at all? There’s no such thing as “taste”, the republic of books is democratic – if anyone tells me this or that book is essentially good or bad and I must – must! – agree with them I say fie! Fie! I fling your opinion back in your pink startled craw – monster! I reject this outrageous imposition of arbitrary value on a book!
And yet … speaking personally, I think I have perfect taste. Here’s what I think :
1) there are books I think are good which most people also think are good (which reinforces my opinion and makes me sure I’m right) Example : The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
2) there are books I think are good which most people think are actually bad ( but I know what’s what and they’re all idiots) Example : A Canticle for Leibowitz
3) there are books I think are good which are actually bad (but when I say good, I don’t mean good good, I mean many things, such as so-bad-it’s-good, or so sleazy it’s good – I realise that Pringles and Galaxy Caramel isn’t haute cuisine) Example : Interview with the Vampire
Corollary of this is :
there are books I think are bad which most people also think are bad, and ditto ditto as above, ending with
there are books I think are bad which are actually good (which fills me with anxiety – am I not as smart as I thought I was? this too-clever stuff makes my brain hurt) Example : Darconville’s Cat or Wittgenstein’s Mistress
And behind this kind of interrogation of personal taste there is a conviction that:
there are good books
and
there are bad books
or more explicitly
there are intrinsically good books – also known as great literature
there are intrinsically bad books – also known as worthless rubbish
Can all that be true? The very idea of literary “taste” implies that your judgement is subjective, and yet those who think they have “taste” (meaning “good taste”) don’t think their idea of a good book is subjective at all, they think that the books they think are good really ARE good, no arguments allowed.
THE OBC : THE CASE FOR
Oprah has never figured in my world but I knew she was a phenomenon. When I bought We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates it came with an OBC sticker on the cover. I did not realise the significance of the sticker. Here are the facts.
The first phase of OBC ran between September 1996 and April 2002. One book was chosen more or less each month “and in an industry in which only a few novels sell more than 30,000 copies, those recommended by Winfrey routinely sold a million or more…Oprah’s endorsement of any title meant a minimum of 500,000 extra sales.”
As the OBC became the mightiest power in the land of American literature, it also became “a crucible for the heated clash between high and low literary taste”.
Disclosure : Of the 45 novels chosen in this first phase of OBC I have read six (She’s Come Undone, A Virtuous Woman, The Poisonwood Bible, We were the Mulvaneys, The Corrections and A Fine Balance) and they were all good or great except Wally Lamb, which wasn’t.
Kathleen Rooney read the whole lot and concluded that there were 5 unreadable ones, 5 dreadful ones, and the rest were good or great. So in her opinion (which is worth having) Oprah was directing her vast, vast army of fans towards good stuff, mainly. The OBC was a terrific force for good. It got millions reading who hadn’t touched a book for 15 years (i.e. since they had to). So… that’s agood thing, right? What was the problem?
RAINING DOWN ON OPRAH
“the club’s selections were too depressing, too woman-orientated, too bourgeois, too middle-brow, too self-helpy”
“Winfrey, then, via her simplistic How did this book make you feel? approach, habitually represented genuinely good novels as little more than self-help texts to be consulted in her ongoing treatment of all that ails America”
it was thought to be “a cheesy, sentimental, middlebrow institution”
“if you’re that popular, the thinking goes, if you speak to the masses, you can’t possibly be saying anything too intelligent”
Jonathan Franzen : “she’s picked some good books, but she’s picked enough schmaltzy, one-dimensional ones that I cringe, myself”
Jonathan Franzen: “ Beginning the next night in Chicago I’ll encounter two kinds of readers in signing lines. One kind will say to me, essentially, ‘I liked your book and I think it’s wonderful oprah picked it’ and the other kind will say ‘I liked your book and I’m so sorry Oprah picked it’”
KR : “Franzen left a trail of anti-Oprah comments like a swimmer bleeding carelessly in the ocean”
Some writers “feel that their books are being read by the wrong people, i.e. housewives from Oklahoma who don’t know SoHo from TriBeCa and worse, don’t care” (Jonathan Yardley)
Description of Oprah’s choices ; “penny dreadfuls for the Therapy Age”
“the Oprah list offers us that rather ominous thing : not a world without pity but a world composed of nothing but” (Tom Shone)
“you just can’t bear another inspiring yet oh-so-depressing tale of a single mother whose daughter is kidnapped or worse but who works through her pain and finds strength in the midst of tragedy” (Bill Ott)
Title of Wall Street Journal article on OBC : “Read them And Weep – Misery, Pain, Catastrophe, Despair… and that’s Just the First chapter”
IN CONCLUSION OR THIS REVIEW WILL JUST GO ON AND ON
Kathleen Rooney says in effect that the OBC did a great thing in the worst possible way.
“Winfrey consistently interpreted the books of the OBC not as literary novels but as so many self-help texts. Winfrey damaged these complex, sophisticated narratives of her own choosing by treating them as corollaries to her program’s doctrine of mindless American optimism… such a reductive and sentimentalizing approach – one which told people only that it’s good to read, not necessarily that it’s even better to be thoughtful about it – could hardly be expected to teach people to be careful, contemplative, discriminating readers. And indeed it didn’t.”
MORAL OF THE STORY
Yes it’s true – we live in a world where no good deed goes unpunished.
* There’s a chapter where she uses the words “othering” and “positionality” and I had to look those up.
** e.g. “if I may flog this OBC as recently deceased loved one metaphor just one final time…”
Kathleen Rooney writes in a very captivating manner, stepping neatly from egg-head observations* into excited girl-fan admissions and from academic rigour to the conversational** . Mostly she’s brisk and witty and negotiates huge cultural controversies with an adroitness I wish I had a quarter of. I was sorry to take my leave of her.
What this book is about is giant issues of sex, class, education and taste all rammed through the concentrating lens of the thing called Oprah’s Book Club – in KR’s words “the reasons behind the cultural unrest surrounding this mother of all book groups”. And what a fascinating knot of complication it is, too.
KR : “it behooves us to try to understand why we, as individuals, experience such powerful inclinations to embrace certain artistic and cultural phenomena while rejecting others.”
Well, let’s see.
PB’S ANATOMY OF ALL THE BOOKS THERE EVER WERE
1)There are highbrow books (which may be good or bad) - Example : Ulysses, good; Finnegans Wake, bad)
2) There are middlebrow books (which may be good or bad) - Example : The Poisonwood Bible, good; The Cider House Rules, bad)
3) There are lowbrow books (which may be good or bad) – example : The Killer Inside me (good); Flesh Gothic (bad)
But hold on…. can those words good and bad be applied to books at all? There’s no such thing as “taste”, the republic of books is democratic – if anyone tells me this or that book is essentially good or bad and I must – must! – agree with them I say fie! Fie! I fling your opinion back in your pink startled craw – monster! I reject this outrageous imposition of arbitrary value on a book!
And yet … speaking personally, I think I have perfect taste. Here’s what I think :
1) there are books I think are good which most people also think are good (which reinforces my opinion and makes me sure I’m right) Example : The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
2) there are books I think are good which most people think are actually bad ( but I know what’s what and they’re all idiots) Example : A Canticle for Leibowitz
3) there are books I think are good which are actually bad (but when I say good, I don’t mean good good, I mean many things, such as so-bad-it’s-good, or so sleazy it’s good – I realise that Pringles and Galaxy Caramel isn’t haute cuisine) Example : Interview with the Vampire
Corollary of this is :
there are books I think are bad which most people also think are bad, and ditto ditto as above, ending with
there are books I think are bad which are actually good (which fills me with anxiety – am I not as smart as I thought I was? this too-clever stuff makes my brain hurt) Example : Darconville’s Cat or Wittgenstein’s Mistress
And behind this kind of interrogation of personal taste there is a conviction that:
there are good books
and
there are bad books
or more explicitly
there are intrinsically good books – also known as great literature
there are intrinsically bad books – also known as worthless rubbish
Can all that be true? The very idea of literary “taste” implies that your judgement is subjective, and yet those who think they have “taste” (meaning “good taste”) don’t think their idea of a good book is subjective at all, they think that the books they think are good really ARE good, no arguments allowed.
THE OBC : THE CASE FOR
Oprah has never figured in my world but I knew she was a phenomenon. When I bought We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates it came with an OBC sticker on the cover. I did not realise the significance of the sticker. Here are the facts.
The first phase of OBC ran between September 1996 and April 2002. One book was chosen more or less each month “and in an industry in which only a few novels sell more than 30,000 copies, those recommended by Winfrey routinely sold a million or more…Oprah’s endorsement of any title meant a minimum of 500,000 extra sales.”
As the OBC became the mightiest power in the land of American literature, it also became “a crucible for the heated clash between high and low literary taste”.
Disclosure : Of the 45 novels chosen in this first phase of OBC I have read six (She’s Come Undone, A Virtuous Woman, The Poisonwood Bible, We were the Mulvaneys, The Corrections and A Fine Balance) and they were all good or great except Wally Lamb, which wasn’t.
Kathleen Rooney read the whole lot and concluded that there were 5 unreadable ones, 5 dreadful ones, and the rest were good or great. So in her opinion (which is worth having) Oprah was directing her vast, vast army of fans towards good stuff, mainly. The OBC was a terrific force for good. It got millions reading who hadn’t touched a book for 15 years (i.e. since they had to). So… that’s agood thing, right? What was the problem?
RAINING DOWN ON OPRAH
“the club’s selections were too depressing, too woman-orientated, too bourgeois, too middle-brow, too self-helpy”
“Winfrey, then, via her simplistic How did this book make you feel? approach, habitually represented genuinely good novels as little more than self-help texts to be consulted in her ongoing treatment of all that ails America”
it was thought to be “a cheesy, sentimental, middlebrow institution”
“if you’re that popular, the thinking goes, if you speak to the masses, you can’t possibly be saying anything too intelligent”
Jonathan Franzen : “she’s picked some good books, but she’s picked enough schmaltzy, one-dimensional ones that I cringe, myself”
Jonathan Franzen: “ Beginning the next night in Chicago I’ll encounter two kinds of readers in signing lines. One kind will say to me, essentially, ‘I liked your book and I think it’s wonderful oprah picked it’ and the other kind will say ‘I liked your book and I’m so sorry Oprah picked it’”
KR : “Franzen left a trail of anti-Oprah comments like a swimmer bleeding carelessly in the ocean”
Some writers “feel that their books are being read by the wrong people, i.e. housewives from Oklahoma who don’t know SoHo from TriBeCa and worse, don’t care” (Jonathan Yardley)
Description of Oprah’s choices ; “penny dreadfuls for the Therapy Age”
“the Oprah list offers us that rather ominous thing : not a world without pity but a world composed of nothing but” (Tom Shone)
“you just can’t bear another inspiring yet oh-so-depressing tale of a single mother whose daughter is kidnapped or worse but who works through her pain and finds strength in the midst of tragedy” (Bill Ott)
Title of Wall Street Journal article on OBC : “Read them And Weep – Misery, Pain, Catastrophe, Despair… and that’s Just the First chapter”
IN CONCLUSION OR THIS REVIEW WILL JUST GO ON AND ON
Kathleen Rooney says in effect that the OBC did a great thing in the worst possible way.
“Winfrey consistently interpreted the books of the OBC not as literary novels but as so many self-help texts. Winfrey damaged these complex, sophisticated narratives of her own choosing by treating them as corollaries to her program’s doctrine of mindless American optimism… such a reductive and sentimentalizing approach – one which told people only that it’s good to read, not necessarily that it’s even better to be thoughtful about it – could hardly be expected to teach people to be careful, contemplative, discriminating readers. And indeed it didn’t.”
MORAL OF THE STORY
Yes it’s true – we live in a world where no good deed goes unpunished.
* There’s a chapter where she uses the words “othering” and “positionality” and I had to look those up.
** e.g. “if I may flog this OBC as recently deceased loved one metaphor just one final time…”
April 17, 2023
“Reading With Oprah ….The Book Club That Changed America was published in 2005.
Its fascinating and revealing on so many levels: everyone seems to have an opinion about the OBC, which first launched in 1996…….and ended its ‘televised’ book club 2002.
Anyone reading ‘this book’…..will have opinions — making it a great choice for book clubs around the world today. Its certainly loaded with hot topics for discussion:
….thoughts about the televised book club — the pros and cons it had — plus readers could include discussions about the OBC, non-televised Book Club today.
….Why the TV book club ended as it did — only to reemerge fourteen months later with its new focus on ‘great books’.
….myths and presuppositions surrounding the club.
….cultural authority and literary taste.
….cultural influences exploring heated discord between ‘high’ and ‘low’ literary taste.
….Authors input …. and personal interviews.
“I believe Oprah’s Book Club is probably one of the best possible uses of a television set”….. said Barbara Kingsolver.
….Other authors input:
…..Jonathan Franzen, Sven Birkerts, Sue Miller, Wally Lamb, Anna Quindlen, Toni Morrison, Rohinton Mistry, etc. etc.
….Selection choices…. their literary value, possible manipulation influences, cultural hierarchy, and social phenomena…..etc.
….Oprah fans….what they mostly want…(mostly richly drawn, fully realized characters)
Oprah’s Book Club is still going strong today. Her most recent pick, “Hello Beautiful”, by Ann Napolitano is a book I read before Oprah made her monthly announcement….but as Kathleen Rooney shared in this book ….. she had been working at a bookstore….(Andersons bookstore in Naperville at the time), when every time a new Oprah book was announced, customers flocked to her store to buy the book. Rooney turned her Curiosity inquiry into this book.
THE GUTS I THOUGHT! Lol but — ROONEY is brilliant in her own right — an intellectual- as she claimed Oprah as well. Rooney had no trouble holding her own.
Kathleen Rooney wrote this IMPRESSIVE WELL RESEARCHED …..(along with her personal opinions), DEBUT* when she herself was only in her 30’s.
I can’t imagine the challenge it was to write about Oprah and her book club. I couldn’t help but admire the incredible amount of work, research, interviews, even confidence that Kathleen had to have had to take on a project of this size at anytime in her writing career, let alone a debut.
I was floored! It’s packed filled to the brim with contemplating thought.
Rooney wrote:
….”Winfrey has proven yet again that there exists more than one appropriate way to deal with literature; she has set out to further the sense of community that is one of the secrets to the OBC’s success by joining the community herself, as an almost-equal”.
“In doing so, Winfrey has exhibited a shrewd understanding of how to manage and master one of the most fundamental predagogical issues of higher education: there’s sometimes daunting balance of power between teacher and student.
Kathleen Rooney then goes on to say …. about herself:
“In my own Teaching Freshman Writing class in graduate school—and, I’m sure, and many such classes across the nation—this delicate equilibrium was boiled down to a cheesy but apt saying about the need to know when to be ‘a guide on the side’ as opposed to a ‘sage on the stage’. Winfrey has certainly been both a guide and a sage at various points in her book-recommending career, but it seems a particular stroke of book-clubbing genius for her to have realized the benefits of presenting herself as both a model and a colleague in order to persuade hundreds of thousands of Americans to haul their way eagerly through what amounts to a highly atypical beach read”.
I wanted to read Rooney’s debut … because I realized recently after having read an arc of her latest novel …..”From Dust to Stardust”…..due out in September 2023….
that ‘every’ book she writes is intelligent, informative, and enjoyable. I’ve read every novel she’s written, one collection of poetry, and a memoir.
Kathleen Rooney is a marvelous writer…..
be it…..homing pigeons in “Cher Ami and the Major Whittlesey”,
or
…..an 85 year old about to take a walk in “Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk”,
or
…..an inspired unexplored true story about a Hollywood actress— Colleen Moore — the original flapper of silent films …. and the incredible creation of her miniature Fairy Castle — which can be seen at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago….
in “From Dust to Stardust”….
or…..
…… A look at the profession of artistic nude modeling in “Live Nude Girl”….
or….
…..her collections of poetry….
Fact is Kathleen Rooney is a wonderful enlightening author …..
“Reading With Oprah”…. was a very ambitious debut …. I’m glad I read it. Most readers would find value from reading this book …. ….weather you agree or disagree with points addressed.
And….
…..as in every book Kathleen writes….readers will recognize her funny bone ….she has this charming - adorable - subtle humorous side that shines in every book she writes.
If you can’t tell ….I’m a big Kathleen Rooney fan.
Its fascinating and revealing on so many levels: everyone seems to have an opinion about the OBC, which first launched in 1996…….and ended its ‘televised’ book club 2002.
Anyone reading ‘this book’…..will have opinions — making it a great choice for book clubs around the world today. Its certainly loaded with hot topics for discussion:
….thoughts about the televised book club — the pros and cons it had — plus readers could include discussions about the OBC, non-televised Book Club today.
….Why the TV book club ended as it did — only to reemerge fourteen months later with its new focus on ‘great books’.
….myths and presuppositions surrounding the club.
….cultural authority and literary taste.
….cultural influences exploring heated discord between ‘high’ and ‘low’ literary taste.
….Authors input …. and personal interviews.
“I believe Oprah’s Book Club is probably one of the best possible uses of a television set”….. said Barbara Kingsolver.
….Other authors input:
…..Jonathan Franzen, Sven Birkerts, Sue Miller, Wally Lamb, Anna Quindlen, Toni Morrison, Rohinton Mistry, etc. etc.
….Selection choices…. their literary value, possible manipulation influences, cultural hierarchy, and social phenomena…..etc.
….Oprah fans….what they mostly want…(mostly richly drawn, fully realized characters)
Oprah’s Book Club is still going strong today. Her most recent pick, “Hello Beautiful”, by Ann Napolitano is a book I read before Oprah made her monthly announcement….but as Kathleen Rooney shared in this book ….. she had been working at a bookstore….(Andersons bookstore in Naperville at the time), when every time a new Oprah book was announced, customers flocked to her store to buy the book. Rooney turned her Curiosity inquiry into this book.
THE GUTS I THOUGHT! Lol but — ROONEY is brilliant in her own right — an intellectual- as she claimed Oprah as well. Rooney had no trouble holding her own.
Kathleen Rooney wrote this IMPRESSIVE WELL RESEARCHED …..(along with her personal opinions), DEBUT* when she herself was only in her 30’s.
I can’t imagine the challenge it was to write about Oprah and her book club. I couldn’t help but admire the incredible amount of work, research, interviews, even confidence that Kathleen had to have had to take on a project of this size at anytime in her writing career, let alone a debut.
I was floored! It’s packed filled to the brim with contemplating thought.
Rooney wrote:
….”Winfrey has proven yet again that there exists more than one appropriate way to deal with literature; she has set out to further the sense of community that is one of the secrets to the OBC’s success by joining the community herself, as an almost-equal”.
“In doing so, Winfrey has exhibited a shrewd understanding of how to manage and master one of the most fundamental predagogical issues of higher education: there’s sometimes daunting balance of power between teacher and student.
Kathleen Rooney then goes on to say …. about herself:
“In my own Teaching Freshman Writing class in graduate school—and, I’m sure, and many such classes across the nation—this delicate equilibrium was boiled down to a cheesy but apt saying about the need to know when to be ‘a guide on the side’ as opposed to a ‘sage on the stage’. Winfrey has certainly been both a guide and a sage at various points in her book-recommending career, but it seems a particular stroke of book-clubbing genius for her to have realized the benefits of presenting herself as both a model and a colleague in order to persuade hundreds of thousands of Americans to haul their way eagerly through what amounts to a highly atypical beach read”.
I wanted to read Rooney’s debut … because I realized recently after having read an arc of her latest novel …..”From Dust to Stardust”…..due out in September 2023….
that ‘every’ book she writes is intelligent, informative, and enjoyable. I’ve read every novel she’s written, one collection of poetry, and a memoir.
Kathleen Rooney is a marvelous writer…..
be it…..homing pigeons in “Cher Ami and the Major Whittlesey”,
or
…..an 85 year old about to take a walk in “Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk”,
or
…..an inspired unexplored true story about a Hollywood actress— Colleen Moore — the original flapper of silent films …. and the incredible creation of her miniature Fairy Castle — which can be seen at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago….
in “From Dust to Stardust”….
or…..
…… A look at the profession of artistic nude modeling in “Live Nude Girl”….
or….
…..her collections of poetry….
Fact is Kathleen Rooney is a wonderful enlightening author …..
“Reading With Oprah”…. was a very ambitious debut …. I’m glad I read it. Most readers would find value from reading this book …. ….weather you agree or disagree with points addressed.
And….
…..as in every book Kathleen writes….readers will recognize her funny bone ….she has this charming - adorable - subtle humorous side that shines in every book she writes.
If you can’t tell ….I’m a big Kathleen Rooney fan.
December 18, 2020
This book had such a great premise. Examining the impact of The Oprah Winfrey Book Club. I expected a deep dive into how it was created, the cultural impact it had and a breakdown of the books read.
What I got was a muddled mess of conflicting points. The author Kathleen Rooney repeatedly calls out literary intellectuals for their elitist and snobby views on the OWBC and then she goes on to agree with everything those people say.
I would have no problem with that opinion if she didn't keep saying how much she loves the OWBC and thinks those intellectuals are wrong....and then turns around and agrees with them again and again and again.
Here are just a few of the things Kare...Kathleen Rooney says about OPRAH
1. She repeatedly calls Oprah lazy
2. She repeatedly calls Oprah not very smart
3. She repeatedly tells OPRAH WINFREY how OPRAH WINFREY should run THE OPRAH WINFREY SHOW
4. She repeatedly implied that maybe Oprah's history of sexual assault has left her mentally and emotionally stunted
5. The only OWBC picks she seemed to enjoy were the ones written by white men...except of course she just LOVES Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye(because white women always say they love that book)
Bottomline I dont know what the purpose of this book was, because the author can never seem to stick to a point. She calls out snobby intellectuals and then agrees with them. She claims that people dislike the OWBC because it's about women reading books and then puts down the books that women read. She claims that there's nothing wrong with the OWBC selling millions of books and then says "isn't awful how many books the OWBC sells".
Had the author either chose a side and stuck with it or decided not to choose sides I would have been fine with this book. But instead she claims to be on one side while actually being on the other side.
If you think Oprah Winfrey is a lazy, stupid, stunted, idiot who's talk show sucks, than just write that book. Dont pretend to love Oprah while belittling her accomplishments. I'm sure there's a market for anti Oprah book, just put your chest out and openly write it.
No rec.
What I got was a muddled mess of conflicting points. The author Kathleen Rooney repeatedly calls out literary intellectuals for their elitist and snobby views on the OWBC and then she goes on to agree with everything those people say.
I would have no problem with that opinion if she didn't keep saying how much she loves the OWBC and thinks those intellectuals are wrong....and then turns around and agrees with them again and again and again.
Here are just a few of the things Kare...Kathleen Rooney says about OPRAH
1. She repeatedly calls Oprah lazy
2. She repeatedly calls Oprah not very smart
3. She repeatedly tells OPRAH WINFREY how OPRAH WINFREY should run THE OPRAH WINFREY SHOW
4. She repeatedly implied that maybe Oprah's history of sexual assault has left her mentally and emotionally stunted
5. The only OWBC picks she seemed to enjoy were the ones written by white men...except of course she just LOVES Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye(because white women always say they love that book)
Bottomline I dont know what the purpose of this book was, because the author can never seem to stick to a point. She calls out snobby intellectuals and then agrees with them. She claims that people dislike the OWBC because it's about women reading books and then puts down the books that women read. She claims that there's nothing wrong with the OWBC selling millions of books and then says "isn't awful how many books the OWBC sells".
Had the author either chose a side and stuck with it or decided not to choose sides I would have been fine with this book. But instead she claims to be on one side while actually being on the other side.
If you think Oprah Winfrey is a lazy, stupid, stunted, idiot who's talk show sucks, than just write that book. Dont pretend to love Oprah while belittling her accomplishments. I'm sure there's a market for anti Oprah book, just put your chest out and openly write it.
No rec.
April 29, 2010
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
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 23, 2017
This was a very insightful book. I didn't know how much controversy surrounded Oprah's book club. Can't we all just read what we want without judgment?
July 6, 2011
After finishing my AA degree I was in the mood for a light read, which this was not. This book read like a dissertation and the objectivity of the book made it hard for me to decide if Rooney like Oprah's Book Club or not. I also thought the chapter on the Jonathan Franzen/Oprah tiff was too long.
June 3, 2014
oh this book made me feel like i really KNEW all the characters.
hha, no, a joke, sorry. a re-working of author's dissertation into a bit more easily digested study of obc and how it worked and its impact on tv, books sellers, authors, other tv shows, book clubs, and even the o herownself. some take aways: tv kills your brain, do not watch it, even or especially if talking about books ; the o did something no one . no one, in the history of books and readers has ever done, pushed, non religiously and non commercially (of the actual product anyway, she WAS selling herself/show but that is a different matter) books and reading to such an extent she effected whole industries, whole fucking continents. weird huh.
has nice bibliography and list of obc picks.
see this review by 'paul' for a much more comprehensive and frankly, wonderful reivew https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
hha, no, a joke, sorry. a re-working of author's dissertation into a bit more easily digested study of obc and how it worked and its impact on tv, books sellers, authors, other tv shows, book clubs, and even the o herownself. some take aways: tv kills your brain, do not watch it, even or especially if talking about books ; the o did something no one . no one, in the history of books and readers has ever done, pushed, non religiously and non commercially (of the actual product anyway, she WAS selling herself/show but that is a different matter) books and reading to such an extent she effected whole industries, whole fucking continents. weird huh.
has nice bibliography and list of obc picks.
see this review by 'paul' for a much more comprehensive and frankly, wonderful reivew https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
February 28, 2008
I used to pooh-pooh Oprah's Reading Club like so many others, and now I think it's great that she promotes books and reading. Though after reading this balanced and critical examination of this TV book club, I still think it's positive since Oprah stirs up many dormant readers to read again, but the club has much room for improvement.
This book brings up the issue of highbrow vs. lowbrow culture, the problem of discussing literature through the medium of television, and the Oprah vs. Jonathan Franzen deal.
The author looks at the disturbing way that Oprah projects her own story onto every narrative presented--though she thinks Oprah's selections are generally worthwhile, she is concerned by how Oprah seems to publicly read each book as a self-help guide, and which serves as a poor and one-dimensional model for other readers.
This book brings up the issue of highbrow vs. lowbrow culture, the problem of discussing literature through the medium of television, and the Oprah vs. Jonathan Franzen deal.
The author looks at the disturbing way that Oprah projects her own story onto every narrative presented--though she thinks Oprah's selections are generally worthwhile, she is concerned by how Oprah seems to publicly read each book as a self-help guide, and which serves as a poor and one-dimensional model for other readers.
June 26, 2011
it seemed the author had an [negative] opinion of the oprah book club, told the book club to prove her wrong, when it didn't she wrote this book. there are times when the assumptions she makes about how readers read and why readers read are so incorrect its frustrating, and times when this book is super insightful. overall pretty irritating
May 16, 2010
Theoretically interestin, but such an intellectual discussion that it quickly became boring. More like reading a thesis. Skimmed firsthalf. Has list of OBC books. Highbrow vs. lowbrow lit -- Oprah = "middlebrow"....
April 7, 2011
Please see my review for The Name of the Rose. Really.
January 6, 2018
Reading with Oprah: The Book Club that Changed America by Kathleen Rooney
An important disclosure, Kathleen Rooney is a friend of mine.
Part 1
And she is one of my many favorite authors because she is brilliant, intelligent, witty, erudite, knowledgeable and passionate about every topic she addresses. Reading RWO was like charring with Rooney over Fish Ginger and Pad Thai while she expands upon the rags-to-riches billionaire who got America to read again. And I always learn something from a Rooney book and not that antiseptic school-book sort of learning. Instead I'm.earned that Oprah didn't make any money off the books she promoted. That she couldn't be bought. That she required her audience to look for the positive in the books they read. That would have left me out. Anyway I'm a big fan of Kathleen Rooney's and I would recommend all the poems, memoirs, insightful nonfictions and novels that she writes.
Part 2
I'm guilty. I never watched an episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show and, in the beginning, I criticized her book selections for representing a sort of Oprah genre, one in which a woman with the odds stacked against her used her considerable spunk and grit to make something of herself: The Oprah Story. In the ear.y days of her book club, I read a few books I didn't like. I'm looking at you Midwives. I see you hiding in the jello pudding, Bill. Then I read The Poisonwood Bible. One of my favorite books. Since then I've also read The Bluest Eye, One Hundred Year of Solitude and Paradise, all among my favorite books. And I think if is inarguable that Oprah Winfrey galvanized a multitude of Americans to read. Who cares if the books she chose aren't whatever it was The Pale King was? I would disagree with Oprah's requirement that all of the audience had to speak to the positive elements about the book of the month. The dissent encourages brain growth.
Part 3
Oprah was criticized for selecting books that tended to tell a certain story. It might that anyone selecting 50 books would nominate a roster that says something about one's personal narrative.
An important disclosure, Kathleen Rooney is a friend of mine.
Part 1
And she is one of my many favorite authors because she is brilliant, intelligent, witty, erudite, knowledgeable and passionate about every topic she addresses. Reading RWO was like charring with Rooney over Fish Ginger and Pad Thai while she expands upon the rags-to-riches billionaire who got America to read again. And I always learn something from a Rooney book and not that antiseptic school-book sort of learning. Instead I'm.earned that Oprah didn't make any money off the books she promoted. That she couldn't be bought. That she required her audience to look for the positive in the books they read. That would have left me out. Anyway I'm a big fan of Kathleen Rooney's and I would recommend all the poems, memoirs, insightful nonfictions and novels that she writes.
Part 2
I'm guilty. I never watched an episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show and, in the beginning, I criticized her book selections for representing a sort of Oprah genre, one in which a woman with the odds stacked against her used her considerable spunk and grit to make something of herself: The Oprah Story. In the ear.y days of her book club, I read a few books I didn't like. I'm looking at you Midwives. I see you hiding in the jello pudding, Bill. Then I read The Poisonwood Bible. One of my favorite books. Since then I've also read The Bluest Eye, One Hundred Year of Solitude and Paradise, all among my favorite books. And I think if is inarguable that Oprah Winfrey galvanized a multitude of Americans to read. Who cares if the books she chose aren't whatever it was The Pale King was? I would disagree with Oprah's requirement that all of the audience had to speak to the positive elements about the book of the month. The dissent encourages brain growth.
Part 3
Oprah was criticized for selecting books that tended to tell a certain story. It might that anyone selecting 50 books would nominate a roster that says something about one's personal narrative.
April 18, 2024
Honestly, I read the first two chapters and skimmed most of the rest. This read like a college research paper that had a requirement of a certain number of words. There is so much repetitiveness in the analysis, with numerous supporting quotes about the same point. I also didn't find the book very enlightening about the primary subject.
August 26, 2012
Oprah's book club books are generally not my style (though we seem to overlap in our taste in memoirs (and The Road!), I generally prefer less realistic themes and more space ships) so I am not personally invested in what the world thinks of her book club. I picked this up because a friend was writing a paper on the book club and I ended up getting curious about the whole notion, so I nabbed her copy of this before it had to go back to the library.
I really liked it. It neither praised Oprah to high heaven nor totally denigrated her. Rooney won me over pretty quickly by using an example (which I now cannot find) of punching someone in the face and explaining exactly why she thought certain of Oprah's book selections were horrible (though she also explained why far more of them were great). She concludes, overall, that the first incarnation of the book club was a positive phenomenon, encouraging increased reading among people previously unlikely to pick up a book, but that it often ended up dumbing down the books, discouraging critical reading or people with negative opinions. (This is not a spoiler because she tells you she's going to conclude this way right in the introduction.)
I really liked it. It neither praised Oprah to high heaven nor totally denigrated her. Rooney won me over pretty quickly by using an example (which I now cannot find) of punching someone in the face and explaining exactly why she thought certain of Oprah's book selections were horrible (though she also explained why far more of them were great). She concludes, overall, that the first incarnation of the book club was a positive phenomenon, encouraging increased reading among people previously unlikely to pick up a book, but that it often ended up dumbing down the books, discouraging critical reading or people with negative opinions. (This is not a spoiler because she tells you she's going to conclude this way right in the introduction.)
May 4, 2010
I'm torn when it comes to rating this book because I mostly agreed with the author and that makes me like her because I'm a compulsive narcissist. So I should give her at least a four. However I didn't think that the different pieces of the book fit together very well (especially the epilogue) and I was frankly bored by her tangents about television, politics, and blogs. She would start off with a good point and then beat it to death with her earnestness. Of course the biggest problem could be that I really don't have an opinion about Oprah's Book Club or Oprah herself. I suppose I like her but I don't really think about her at all. The most passion I've ever felt was towards A New Earth, her pseudo-Buddhist pick in 2008, and that passion was largely irritation directed at the publishers for not meeting the huge demand the selection generated. I got really tired of people asking about it.
Want to read
December 6, 2022This sounds like it could be a good companion piece to Reading Oprah: How Oprah's Book Club Changed the Way America Reads.
April 21, 2009
Many parts of this book were interesting. I especially liked the discussion about elitist reading...high brow versus low brow culture. I was also intrigued with Rooney's chapter on the impact of television on reading. All in all, pretty good stuff. Decent bibliography too.
December 19, 2007
I'm so glad someone read and dissected ALL of Oprah's book club picks and so that I don't have to.
February 2, 2008
Read this for an event at the store. I enjoyed the discussion of the part the book club played in aggravating entrenched ideas of high vs. low culture.
October 21, 2010
Interesting subject matter but was complicated reading. Skim read as some sentences took up a whole paragraph and it was hard work
January 1, 2014
To be frank: This is a book I wish I had written.
June 21, 2014
Interesting study of the OBC phenomenon.
There was more to it than what tv viewers saw.
Of value to those on either side of the high low art argument
There was more to it than what tv viewers saw.
Of value to those on either side of the high low art argument
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