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

[Sloth]

I think that Melville's prose is terrible.

Much like his plots, characters, etc.

[Mamzelle]

Don't give up Austen quite yet. I have found that audio tapes of Austen are very enjoyable--the highfalutin' language becomes a bit ironic when read aloud, and you begin to fall into her pacing and storytelling. They are novels of morals, manners and attitudes. Also, the movies made of her books are suprisingly true to them and are fun and worthwhile. "Sense and Sensibility" in particular. A bad book seldom makes good movie.

[deziner]

I am a seminary student. As difficult as parts of the Bible can be to read, the required reading for some of my classes are even worse. Go figure. Here will be the sum of my seminary experience: Read lots of incredibly difficult books in order to understand a the Bible--an incredibly difficult book.

LOL! I'm majoring in Biblical Studies myself and I totally agree with those lovely books we have as required reading.

[Mr. Jeeves]

I mean, how many heroes rip the arms off their adversaries and beat 'em to death with the bloody stump?

LOL! Now that's the kind of book Oprah needs to feature to liven up her show! From your description, it sounds like most of her selected authors moonlight as scriptwriters for Lifetime television.

[deziner]

I read Sense and Sensibility, too. It was one of the required reading books for English that I actually read and liked. Made me laugh - loved the characters.

I read Beowulf, too - because I had to. The only reason I think some of these books are on the Best Seller lists is because of English teachers.

[Xenalyte]

From your description, it sounds like most of Oprah's selected authors moonlight as scriptwriters for Lifetime television.

That is THE perfect characterization.

[Sloth]

Who Moved the Cheese?

[Mamzelle]

Interesting thread--to see one of my favorite books, "Cold Mountain" listed, was sad. There isn't a better descriptive voice for the Appalachian's than what I heard in the book, or a more deflating one for the Confederacy short of Gone With The Wind. (People reading GWTW never seem to notice MMitchell's scathing view of the Confed South). My attachment to the ridges themselves may have a lot to do with it, "looking up the rows of blue ridges to that bulk which is Cold Mountain." Makes me want to head up to Blowing Rock right now..."that the Cherokees called the Cataloochee, the mounting rows of grey ridges." I hear words like "scarp" and "ivy" for the mountain laurel, old terms that my grandparents used, and realize that Frazier took many pains to get it right.

One quibble, though...there were chestnut trees back then, and Inman needn't have starved. In November there should have been plenty on the ground to eat. The chestnuts provided mast for everyone.

They've got some good music lined up for the movie, Ralph Stanley will be featured, but my hopes for that movie are low. They've filmed it in Romania. *Romania*! And they cast the ingenue part -- Aussie Nicole Kidman as Ada. Ada was dark and much younger than Kidman. Jude Law as Inman, way too British Pretty. This is going to be Gone With The Amazing Mr. Ripley.

[Focault's Pendulum]

Eco's book following The Name of the Rose was Foucault’s Pendulum.

I have a soft spot for that book.

[BabsC]

I reread Atlas Shrugged during the klinton admin. and put current names to some of the characters and foud the results amusing and interesting.

[Mamzelle]

Emma was the hardest one for me to read, too. But the story has been made over and over in the movies--if you have ever seen the teen story "Clueless"--it is an appealing and adorable adaptation of "Emma". Paltrow did a good version, too, and of course there are even better British versions.

Beowulf...The reason they make you read it (or try to read it) is that it's the first story written in English. If you like LOTR, Tolkein drew from traditions in Beowulf.

[steve-b]

"Sense and Sensibility" in particular.

I recall that as one of the best Black Adder episodes. ;-)

[deziner]

Yeah - in my paper I had to write on Beowulf, one of my sources was from a critical essay Tolkein wrote on Beowulf. I do love Tolkein (though his essays are HARD to read) and I loved LOTR, The Hobbit, and The Simarillion. I'm a big Fantasy reader.

[bonfire]

Romania? Nicole Kidman? Unbelievable.

I rarely watch movies of the books I've loved. Always so dissapointing.

One book I couldn't get through was "Confederacy of Dunces". (you reminded me of it) I'll admit it was too esoteric for my brain!

Do you read Lee Smith?

[Mamzelle]

Well, the soundtrack should be good. Michael Mann managed to film "Last of the Mohicans" in the Blue Ridge, why can't the producers of Cold Mountain? I don't think the director has made an American movie *yet*--he made The English Patient, Mr. Ripley...the movie is years behind schedule. Cruise was supposed to be Inman, which I think would have been the better choice than Joe the Gigolo.

Don't know Lee Smith.

[Howlin]

I bought Executive Orders on September 10th, 2001.

Want to know how I remember exactly when I bought it?

Because I went to sleep reading the first chapter and woke up to the talking about the first plane hitting the WTC.

I thought I was still dreaming. I never picked it back up.

[bonfire]

Check out her books. She is from Appalachian's and writes her stories about the people from there. My college son just had to read some of her stories in Lit class.

Another interesting book about that area is "Prodigal Summmer" by Barbara Kingsolver. Has a liberal slant, but the flora and fauna references are wonderful.

[Howlin]

I rarely watch movies of the books I've loved. Always so dissapointing.

Me, too!

Plus nobody will go with me because I whine the whole time about something MISSING in the plot, etc. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.

[Howlin]

Cold Mountain won't be filmed in North Carolina?

[Skooz]

Of course, not all of Shakespeare in meant to be performed.
My favorite of his sonnets:

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,
Haply I think on thee,-- and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;

For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.