Unread Bestsellers (what bestseller can you not get through?)

The Word Spy ^ | Jan, 2003

[Utah Girl]

unread bestseller

(UN.red best.sel.ur) n. A book that many people purchase but few read in its entirety.

Example Citation:

There's the National Book Critics Circle Awards, another nice "high-culture" opportunity for Jonathan Franzen, author of jumbo unread bestseller The Corrections. —Alexandra Jacobs, "The Eight-Day Week," New York Observer, March 11, 2002

Backgrounder:
Here's my all-time Top 10 unread bestsellers list:

The Bible
A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco
The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom
Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak
Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
The Bell Curve, Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein
The End of History, Francis Fukuyama
Beowulf, Seamus Heaney (trans.)

Earliest Citation:

A 500-page novel set in a 14th-century monastery and written by an Italian professor of semiotics is hardly the stuff of conventional best sellers. But "The Name of the Rose," by Umberto Eco, has proven to be just that. ...

A few cynical observers suspect that snob appeal has played a considerable role in the book's rise. Says Howard Kaminsky, president of Warner Books, which bought the paperback rights for $550,000: "Every year there is one great unread best seller. A lot of people who will buy the book will never read it." It serves, he has said, as a "passport" to intellectual respectability. "It doesn't hurt to be seen carrying a copy at the Museum of Modern Art. It hints you've got something more in your mind than getting picked up."
~~~—Alexandre Still, "Miracle of the Rose," Newsweek, September 26, 1983

[Utah Girl]

I'm too tired to think of any bestsellers I've shrugged my shoulders over (and others have raved about.) How about yours? Someone highly recommended An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears, I made it to page 75 and couldn't go on. A book group I belonged to read The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, many loved it, I couldn't get to page 50.

[goodnesswins]

I'm in the middle of Jane Austen's "Emma" and probably going to give it up....sheesh....the sentence structure is driving me batty....like she was just trying to dream up words to make the story longer. (Lucky I wasn't required to read it when I was younger.) I can usually make it through any book. I've been on a Herman Wouk jag for a couple of years, reading bunches of his. Can't think of any others right now....cause I'm supposed to be heading to bed....night night.

[Rodney King]

I can't read Moby Dick or Billy Budd, I think that Melville's prose is terrible.

[Cold Heat]

Bill O'Reilly

[stylin19a]

Speaking of shrugged shoulders, it's "Atlas Shrugged" for me

I still haven't made it all the way through John Galt's speech.

[canuck_conservative]

For anybody who likes to read, check out (if you haven't already done so) the "Project Gutenberg" website:

http://www.promo.net/pg/

There you'll thousands of books, ranging from classical to modern and everything between, all converted to text format, and all available for download FREE. No fees, no registration, no membership required!!

For book-lovers, this is a gold-mine!!!

[Cogadh na Sith]

"Vineland" by Thomas Pynchon.

What a steaming loaf of dung that was... I made it halfway through.

[KantianBurke]

War and Peace

[InterceptPoint]

Yes to Gravity's Rainbow - Just could't make it.

No to The Bell Curve. Very interesting book. I read it cover to cover.

[ETERNAL WARMING]

I can't think of one, but would like to take this opportunity to tell readers to boycott Dana Stabenow's work. She writes mysteries...her most famous character is the Kate shugak/Alaska series.

I just began reading her 2002 book: A Fine and Bitter Snow. In the opening she goes to visit her friend Dan O'Brien of the Alaska Park Service, only to find that he's lost his job. It is blamed on the Bush administration:

"So you've been fired?"

"Not exactly. Invited to take early retirement is more like it." She sighed, and said again, "I don't know Kate. At least Clinton and Gore had a clue about the environment, or pretended they did. This guy, Jesus."
"Maybe it's time. I don't know that I can work with these people for four years, and maybe eight." etc.

I've emailed the author and the publisher to express my intention of posting this insult for their Conservative readers.

stabenow.com and minotaur@stmartins.com

Please join me in boycotting her work and letting the author and her publisher know exactly why you will be boycotting.

[KantianBurke]

Bartelby.com is just as good though the selection is slimmer.

[altair]

Mine would have to be The Hobbit. I tried several times to finish it, but couldn't. I watched the animated version on TV and tried again and still couldn't finish it. I finished the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I didn't like it very much, but I finished it. I don't know what made The Hobbit so interminably dull for me.

[altair]

I still haven't made it all the way through John Galt's speech.

I liked that book, but had the "advantage" of reading it for the first time right after my grandmother had died and I was desperate for any distraction. Speeches are definitely not one of Rand's strongpoints as a writer.

[Gideon7]

The Hobbit was a children's book, while Lord of the Rings was written for adult readers.

[cherry]

I know people are raving about it but I could not get thru " Left Behind" at all.....just so slow....

[Bernard Marx]

Tom Clancey's "Executive Orders." His Olympian arrogance has turned him into an ultra-bore. I enjoyed a few of his earlier works.

[martin_fierro]

Don't know if it was a bestseller, but Tom Clancy's "Red Rabbit" was awful. Talk about formulaic!

Clancy's just sleepwalking through his writing anymore.

[martin_fierro]

LOL just beat me to it.

[fromnovascotia]

Er...what's interesting is some of the books mentioned here were not bestsellers but "Nosellers". Moby Dick I think was self-published and much more interesting than the modern bestsellers. Shakespeare too published almost nothing in his lifetime. The odd thing (that the original article talks about) is that most bestsellers are unreadable and will be forgotten soon. If you go through some old magazines you'll see ads for bestsellers of yesteryear and with the obvious exception of "Gone with he Wind" they are all incredibly obscure. (Beowulf was of course a fantastic bore from the beginning. It has bored the soul out of generations og students).

[BigBobber]

I really enjoyed The Name of the Rose. It's a good murder mystery. However, Eco's next book was incomprehensible. Couldn't get very far in it and forgot the name.

Also on my "didn't finish" list: The Hobbit, anything by the guy who wrote Hotel New Hampshire, or anything by Kurt Vonegut.