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

[Skooz]

I rented the movie "Bonfire of the Vanities" the week after I finished the book.

It was excruciating.

[bonfire]

Oh yeah! The worst was the "Osterman Weekend". I was so mad after seeing that film. Was an entirely different film than the book. In fact, as you see, I'm still bitchin' about it!

[Howlin]

I tried to watch it on TV; I just couln't do it. You're a better person than I am.

The only movie we EVER stopped watching -- we literally will watch anything -- was Ashley Judd in Eye of the Beholder.

It was SO bad that after we watched it, I immediately got on the internet to read the reviews to make sure it wasn't "us," if you know what I mean.......LOL.

[GraniteStateConservative]

Why not? Hollywood rewrites it to fit their agenda anyway.

[redhead]

I stopped reading bestsellers long ago, unless they were by authors I knew I could trust. Most of the crap that passes for bestseller fiction these days would never have gotten into print 30 years ago. Call ME the snob...

[Howlin]

Hey, I loved that book! I loved the first Ludlum books. Hated The Bourne Identity movie. If you haven't seen it, DON'T!

I grumble through most Clancy movies about missing characters....LOL.

[Howlin]

Although, I must admit, I liked "The Hunt for Red October."

I have to admit I cannot make myself STOP watching that movie. I watch it ever single time I see it on TV. If you hum the soundtrack, I think I could act it out.

"One ping only."

[Taliesan]

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."

Agree. The first 50 pages were actually the toughest, and it gets better and better. There are some pages in that book that I will return to for the rest of my life -- of course, I grew up in WV. It's a great book.

[Skooz]

LOL! I read and absolutely adored Robert Massie's "Peter the Great." (A highly readable and towering bio/historical achievement--I cannot recommend it highly enough).

But when the TV miniseries based on the book combined the characters of LeFort and Menshikov, I almost blew a gasket. The two men could have hardly been any more different.

[redhead]

"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."

The first time I plowed through this thing, I was about 15. The second time, it was even harder to finish. Makes a great boat anchor, though...

read "Name of the Rose" and "Dr. Zhivago" long ago. Have read the Bible through many times, and worn out several just from reading, marking, and carrying them around. "The Accidental Tourist" was a dog (no pun intended...).

[Chemist_Geek]

I thought I heard singing.

[Taliesan]

Of course, I also loved Doctor Zhivago, Moby Dick, The Closing of the American Mind, and both Eco's, and I love Jane Austen. What do I know?

[redhead]

"...anything by the guy who wrote Hotel New Hampshire, or anything by Kurt Vonegut."

Bingo. I've read "The Hobbit" and also "The Lord of the Rings" several times, but I must be getting arrogant in my old age...I keep finding places I want to change the wording or the flow of the narrative. Bad Liz! BAD!!

[bonfire]

I read the Osterman book in H.S.. It freaked me out! At the time, it was one of the scariest books I'd ever read. We had a basement like the one in the book and I could just picture the whole scenario. I used to read all his books until he started putting the romances in. Yuck.

[Taliesan]

Oh, I know one. I cannot make it past page 1 of anything Faulkner. Can anybody help me out?

[mommybain]

Keep reading. It gets better.

Agreed. I picked up a book entitled "The Mermaid's Singing" solely because the author's writing style was compared to Charles Frazier's. Boy was I disappointed. "Cold Mountain" is also good on audio.

[Howlin]

"...and I was never here."

We are really bad at this house about movie quotes; don't get me started on Arthur.

[vikingcelt]

I was a perverted psychopath when I was young. I read it then. Don't remember much about it and know I could never read it now. I like to think that I am evolving as I age.

[vikingcelt]

It has been said by some that "Ulysses" is the greatest novel ever written in the English language...but I often wonder if ANYONE has ever actually got through it.

[RiVer19]

The Hot Zone by Richard Preston. OMG the descriptions of the Ebola victims is horrendous. Enough to make you gag in many places. I just had to put it down and try my best to put those images out of my mind. Yack! Very disturbing.