Oprah Focuses on Follett

Like a lot of people, I read Oprah’s latest pick: sure I did. Back in the late 1980s when it was first published. And, yeah: it’s a rockin’ book. But like pretty much all of the books Oprah has chosen since Jonathan Franzen was mean to her back in 2001 when she chose his then new and exciting novel, The Corrections, Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth is a safe choice.

Like most of of the classics, semi-classics and quasi-classics Oprah has been naming as picks since Franzen, no one is going to give her much talkback about Pillars. It’s solid, respected and has been around for a while. In short, it’s safe. (Even though it is also mind-numbingly coincidental that Orpah should choose The Pillars of the Earth a month after its sequel, World Without End, finally makes its way to bookstores. But that might be another story.)

Around the turn of the century when Oprah’s book club was at its peak, the influential entertainer was choosing books that mattered, both to her and other people. It was exciting to watch while she launched and cemented career after career with skill and influence. Back in those days nothing -- and I mean nothing -- could make the masses stand up and take notice than the nod from the queen of daytime TV.

She made some awesome choices back then, too. Choices that have made a difference: certainly to the authors she chose, but also to popular literature at large. Some of her selections were wonderful books by little known authors. Others from that time period were from authors who were well known and respected, but mostly only by the literati and the cognoscenti. Oprah brought these books to a wider audience, and we were all richer for it.

I would like that excitement back, please. And if some of those picks could be women, that would be OK, too.

Oprah’s book club archive is here.