Product Description

Adored by its fans, deplored by its critics, Oprah’s Book Club has been at the center of arguments about cultural authority and literary taste since it began in 1996. Reading with Oprah explores the club's revolutionary fusion of books, television, and commerce and tells the engaging and in-depth story of the OBC phenomenon.

Kathleen Rooney combines extensive research with a dynamic voice to reveal the club’s far-reaching cultural impact and its role as crucible for the clash between “high” and “low” literary taste.

Comprehensive and up-to-date, the book covers the club from its inception in 1996, through the Jonathan Franzen contretemps, the surprising suspension in 2002, and, after the club’s return in 2003, the progression from “great books” to memoir. New material includes an extensive look at the James Frey scandal and Oprah's turn to contemporary fiction, including The Road and Middlesex.

Through close examination of Winfrey’s picks and personal interviews with book club authors and readers, Rooney demonstrates how the club that Barbara Kingsolver calls “one of the best possible uses of a television set” has, according to Wally Lamb, “gotten people of all ages to read, to read more, and to read widely.”

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2324704 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .80" h x 6.27" w x 8.99" l, .98 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 280 pages

From Publishers Weekly
The impact of Oprah Winfrey's television book club is well known to everyone in the book business. Yet many among the literati assumed Oprah's picks were mediocre and resented the star's posturing as a tastemaker. In her lively, information-filled account of the club's history, Rooney, an award-winning poet and a writing instructor at Emerson College, defends Oprah as a genuine "intellectual force" who "promoted the bridging of the high–low chasm" in American literary life. Although Rooney confesses she found many picks unreadable for reasons she eloquently explains she points out the literary worth of selected novels by Toni Morrison, Jonathan Franzen, Rohinton Mistry and others. Rooney relates theoretical ideas on taste, literary value and cultural hierarchy to the social phenomenon of Oprah's club and focuses on every up and down in the face-off between Oprah and Franzen, saying each was disingenuous at times, and both missed an opportunity to look at larger questions of our literary culture. On the negative side, Rooney finds Oprah manipulative and inclined to interpret literary fiction in the reductive terms of autobiography and self-help. Ultimately, Rooney sees Oprah's Book Club (including its latest incarnation) as a positive effort. Although Rooney's sometimes awkward prose can get bogged down in anecdotal evidence and personal asides, she accurately captures the cultural unrest surrounding the Oprah Book Club and raises numerous thoughtful points about its significance.
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Review
“Lively . . . accurately captures the cultural unrest surrounding the Oprah book club and raises numerous thoughtful points about its significance.”

—Publishers Weekly





“This is a highly readable book.”

—Library Journal





“Highly recommended.”

—Choice Magazine





“Rooney takes a steady, smart look at a situation that is both fascinating in its own right and deeply revealing about ‘how it is’ in our cultural life these days.”

—Sven Birkerts

From the Publisher
An in-depth look at Oprah's Book Club, now updated