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

[esoteric]

Hey, when you get to John Galt's speech don't let it stop you. I was about to set the book down and decided to instead read brief excerpts from his speech. I got the jist of it and went on to finish the book. Worked for me.

[Taliesan]

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

My wife and I were reading Hotel New Hampshire together. The writing is ok but we threw it away in the middle because of the fascination with a brother and sister copulating. I think Irving is sick.

Same with John Updike. Undoubtedly a brilliant guy and clever, clever prose, but the characters he obviously likes I would slap silly if I met them on the street, so I can't endure him.

[bonfire]

Anything by Annie Proulx. I threw "The Shipping News" across the room after a few chapters. "His eyes were like blue plastic" Gag.

[Bernard Marx]

Call ME the snob...

Me too. My reading these days is almost entirely non-fiction. It proves the old adage, too: truth really IS often stranger than fiction.

[redhead]

"Right after I check out this new author who goes by the name Travis McGee. Heard of him?"

I used to have a collection of every one of John D. MacDonald's books, including his Science Fiction stories: "The Girl, The Gold Watch, and Everything," "Wine of the Dreamers," and "Ballroom of the Skies." Great stuff. He really was an inspiration for me when I started to write. I used to dream of being able to paint a picture with words the way he did.

[SamAdams76]

I just bought the Umberto Eco book but haven't read it yet. I thought I'd like it because I recently read Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett and liked it a lot. I figured another novel set in medieval times might also interest me. But I will attempt to read it, probably this summer.

There are not many book I can't make it through but I had a real hard time getting through Thomas Wolfe's You Can't Go Home Again and finally gave up on it around page 400 - it just wasn't going anywhere. (This is the other Tom Wolfe, not the Tom Wolfe of The Right Stuff fame.)

Years ago, I tried getting through John Irving's World According to Garp but couldn't finish it, mainly because I couldn't get visions of Robin Williams out of my head.

[lawgirl]

"Bush at War" by Woodward. It's written with very little commentary- strict reporting at its best, but boring.

[Taliesan]

There are not many book I can't make it through but I had a real hard time getting through Thomas Wolfe's You Can't Go Home Again and finally gave up on it around page 400 - it just wasn't going anywhere.

LOL. Page 400!

[redhead]

"Persuasion is a far superior Austen--and shorter. Great movie, too, just in case you can't get through the book."

Best of all, bar none, is "Pride and Prejudice." And the movie by A&E is absolutely gorgeous. See the movie. Don't bother with the book, although it is wonderful. Austen's stories are excellent research for people who write "Regency" romances and other historical fiction.

[Mamzelle]

Isn't it a bitter pill, not to be filmed (at least not much) in the state whose scenery makes for much of the story? The obvious film location for much of this movie is Cade's Cove in Tenn., complete with the old houses. Then head over to the Parkway for Inman's journey uphill. Michael Mann managed to make the Parkway stopoff's look like the Adirondacks in 1756, why can't it look like the Blue Ridge in 1864? The only thing that'll be authentic will be Ralph Stanley.

[GraniteStateConservative]

With Paris on the cover of Time?

That was interesting.

[Oystir]

I guess we have decided on books and not just bestsellers.
I couldn't get through Melville, Tolkien or The Brothers Karamotzoff. Annotated Shakespeare and Chaucer are great.
I would also suggest spending the next six months reading American Westerns, even Louis Lamour.
As for Osterman, my family invested in the movie - nothing like the book - and the accounting in the movie business makes Enron look like angels

[bonfire]

my family invested in the movie


Sorry to hear that. Your family must have been very dissapointed!

[Howlin]

It's such a shame!

My niece is finishing up grad school in Boone, and I was just thinking yesterday I need to get up there before she moves back down here!

No more beautiful country in the whole world than the ride from Tennessee to North Carolina, IMO. Takes my breath away.

[Taliesan]

And the movie by A&E is absolutely gorgeous.

That actress simply BECAME Elizabeth Bennett.

[redhead]

"I'm surprised no one's mentioned Charles Palliser. He's written several books, and I've read three - The Quincunx, Betrayals, and The Unburied. They're quite Dickensian in plot and structure, and I had great trouble putting them down. But then, I'm a Dickens junkie."

You are the only other person I know of who has also read "The Quincunx." I READ, AND READ, AND READ, and enjoyed it, but was kind of discouraged to discover that I'd only read two pages...Talk about an EPIC. But yes, Palliser's stuff is very good. And I share your opinion of Dickens. GMTA!

[greyfoxx39]

This is not the first time Stabenow has slammed conservatives in her novels, and she is a rabid "greenie". I complained about this earlier, but of course, my opinion didn't sway her...I don't buy her books anymore.

[Mamzelle]

Tolkein's narrative--I don't think you're offbase at all. Tolkein's gift was in his imaginative scope, his storytelling and some poetry. There are many awkward hitches and bumps in the flow of narrative, though. I'd still say he wrote the best story of the twentieth century. And for three years I'm going to have the movies under my Christmas tree!

The worst of our era are the Johns and the Anns. John Irving, Updike, and Ann Tyler, and there's another Ann who I've forgotten and who deserves to be. They write the most tedious, self-congratulatory drivel. Stories of small, self-pitying scope. Yet the critics keep praising them. Thankfully, they fall out of print and memory quickly. Phillip Roth, Kingsolving--they're all like the Johns and Anns in pretentiousness.

[mommybain]

Lee Smith

I do, and I love her books! Although you may have to have grown up in Appalachia to fully appreciate her.

[agrace]

Oh I agree. I just finished his latest in paperback, The Summons, big yawner, didn't even really care who was messing with the main character although it was supposed to be this big surprise ending - not. OTOH, his departure from the legal stuff - A Painted House - was AWESOME. He needs to write more of the same.