Jayne ,'Safe'
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
Yeah, Book Alcove. Sorry--when I was writing that, I'd forgotten the name! I figured saying "tucked behind the pho place, and they build bookshelves" probably wasn't needed.
Is it just me, or are there fewer used bookstores than there used to be, though?
Interesting article
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oprah, save us, we can't get by without you.
That's the message from a group of published and award-winning novelists in an open letter to influential television talk-show host Oprah Winfrey, begging her to resume picking new novels for members of her popular book club.
"There's a widely-held belief that the landscape of literary fiction is now a gloomy place," Word of Mouth, a loose alliance of women's authors, wrote. It said fiction sales began to plummet when the The Oprah Winfrey Book Club went off the air in 2002 and stopped featuring contemporary authors.
So, is Oprah the savior of modern fiction?
I used to love those shows though...another reason to hate that Franzen geek, though his mean-spirited and aimless fiction is way reason enough. How do I feel, right?
Franzen? I don't do Oprah, so I'm unfamiliar with how her club works.
Connie, Jonathan Franzen is a moderately talented writer of literary fiction who bitched when his novel was picked for the Oprah book club because he doesn't see himself as an Oprah kind of writer. She suspended the club the next month.
The thing is, though, Oprah should have been able to blow Franzen off like a gnat, both because she's infinite times more famous and because public opinion was on her side. I suspect she was looking for an excuse to quit the club anyhow, and he provided one.
That must be why they're focusing on classics. Dead authors don't bitch.
Has anyone read Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz? I just finished it last night and it broke my heart.
That is why they switched to classics.
The thing that bugged me about the Franzen mess was that, IIRC, he gave the OK for his book to be used, and then started bitching about it. (IIRC, a lot of his bitching was about "Oprah's Book Club" sticker that was put on his book, and something about how that degraded the value of his art. Or something like that. I can't entirely remember.)
Jonathan Franzen is a moderately talented writer of literary fiction who bitched when his novel was picked for the Oprah book club because he doesn't see himself as an Oprah kind of writer.
The guy didn't want hundreds of thousands of sales to fall from the sky? What is he, crazy? You'd think he'd be eager to tapdance naked on barbeque grills to get Oprah to mention his book in passing. What's missing from the equation?
What's missing from the equation?
Snobbery.