Oprah Book Club
By Zoe Agnew
Oprah Winfrey is well known for having altered the literature landscape
of
America. Thanks to the creation of the Oprah Book Club, critically
acclaimed
authors like Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou have reached thousands
of readers
that otherwise would not have picked up their award-winning novels.
The Oprah
Book Club is not only credited with increasing the 'quality' of reading
that
Americans choose, but also the strict quantity of reading. Americans
are
supposedly reading now more than any recent time. Surely a large part
of this
phenomenon is due to the high profile that reading has claimed in
pop-culture.
For those unfamiliar with the Oprah Book Club format, briefly Oprah
selects
one book a month for her Book Club. Because of Oprah's high-profile
status
and immense popularity, that selection immediately becomes a best
seller,
regardless of when it was published or its previous sales performance.
At the
end of that month, the author of the selection appears on the Oprah
television
show, in a cozy dinner setting, along with Oprah and several selected
readers. At the end this show the cycle continues with another book
selection.
The Oprah Book Club website, which lives under the auspices of the
Oxygen
Network, strives to create a space for readers of OBC selections to
discuss
and debate these novels. Online book clubs are thriving, and this
one has the
immense advantage of a huge audience reading a relatively few book
selections.
So there are plenty of people willing to discuss the novel that you
are
enthusiastic about. The disadvantage of this huge readership is the
potential
for an unwieldy and scattered discussion.
Unfortunately, the bulletin board has little organization beyond
by the title
of the novel. For example the discussion of White Oleander by Janet
Fitch, a
selection from May 1999 has 387 messages, listed chronologically.
This makes
for a very difficult meaningful entrance into the discussion, especially
for
people new to the online chat and bulletin board world.
The site has significant organizational problems that detract significantly
from the discussion experience. However, the OBC site is still an
appropriately galvanizing force to its community of OBC enthusiasts
by
encouraging people to not only read but to discuss, analyze and engage
in this
reading at a deeper and more substantial level.