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

[Bernard Marx]

Interesting and sadly ironic. Clancy got that right but it didn't require a lot of imagination in the first place, especially after the guy who flew a light plane into the White House early in the Clinton years. The possibility has been driving the SS nuts for years.

I mentioned E.O. only because a previous Clancy novel was a bore and because the 2-1/4 - inch thick paperback is still reposing on top of my bookshelf gathering dust. My "escape" reading this week is "The Ancient World of the Celts" by Peter Berresford Ellis.

[MississippiMan]

Being a writer who talks to a lot of other writers, this is an interesting topic that gets discussed a lot. As for me, Amazon's LOOK INSIDE feature is one of the greatest money-savers in the online world. Unless I've previously enjoyed an author, and often even then, I go there and read the first few pages before ordering. (You can of course do the same thing in a brick-and-mortar bookstore, but I do virtually all of my book buying online.) I'm not going to slog through anything I don't enjoy, nor even buy it, simply for the sake of looking like I'm "in" and I agree that many a bestseller gets created by masses who do just that.

MM

[pops88]

I love Faulkner. Try reading "As I Lay Dying." It's hysterical. With his books, I think you have to be aware that most of his characters are potential Darwin Award candidates, and he's recounting their idiocies with straight faced, dry humour.

As for best sellers, I figure if the majority of the people like them, they're probably really cr*p so I rarely look at them. Someone recently gave me "Beach Music" and "Prince of Tides." Some of the worst writing I've ever encountered. Another more recent best seller I wasn't able to get through was "Devine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood," which could be more aptly titled "Yada Yada Yada." I'm currently reading P.G. Wodehouse. It's highly entertaining, good, clean fun, and some of it's available through the Gutenburg project.

[Mamzelle]

If it's really Appalachian, I'm heading to Amazon and read up on her.

[jeremiah]

King has become a machine, not feeling what he puts on paper, but rambling at times......Too bad, his work and the way he describes personalities are excellent.....maybe after he unretires, he will have the old spark back

[Poohbah]

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.

Good grief, and you call yourself a FReeper?

The book you're unable to remember the title of is Foucault's Pendulum.

He's working on a sequel, tentatively titled Am I Logged In?

[rpage3]

Don't think this is a bestseller but IMHO, it ought to be and it takes about an hour to read:

http://www.doubletakebook.com

If this book was done with a liberal slant it would be hailed by the media as a pure work of art...

[Mamzelle]

Non-fiction: I found "Arcanum" engrossing. It's the history of the discovery by the West of the formula for porcelain. I know, sounds boring, but it involves a "alchemist" being forced into service to find the secret of turning lead into gold, only he figures out how the Chinese made porcelain. Voila--Europe's porcelain industry.

I have "Emporer of Scent" on order now, don't know if it's good. It's about a man with a valuable sense of smell, and how the perfume industry works.

[Taliesan]

I love Faulkner. Try reading "As I Lay Dying." It's hysterical. With his books, I think you have to be aware that most of his characters are potential Darwin Award candidates, and he's recounting their idiocies with straight faced, dry humour.

Thanks, I'll try it. You might like Dorothy Sayers' murder mysteries. Witty, British fun.

[Taliesan]

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.

Thank you, I feel validated now. What do you think of Margaret Atwood? Read Cat's Eye, very good writer, but not a character in it I could root for.

You are simply not allowed to create characters who are morally good. They must be "complex", which is Hollywood-ese for "screwed up".

[bonfire]

"Although you may have to have grown up in Appalachia to fully appreciate her."

I didn't, but I do! Her characters are outstanding!

[redhead]

"And the movie by A&E is absolutely gorgeous. That actress simply BECAME Elizabeth Bennett."

The A & E productions of the Classics are jewels. One of my pet peeves is a poorly-casted movie, but this one is masterful.

[pops88]

You might like Dorothy Sayers' murder mysteries. Witty, British fun.

Thanks. I'm currently in NZ so they're probably readily available. It's too bad more foreign literature isn't available in the US. There are so many good writers from other English speaking countries that are overlooked. Sad.

[redhead]

"Being a writer who talks to a lot of other writers, this is an interesting topic that gets discussed a lot. As for me, Amazon's LOOK INSIDE feature is one of the greatest money-savers in the online world. Unless I've previously enjoyed an author, and often even then, I go there and read the first few pages before ordering. (You can of course do the same thing in a brick-and-mortar bookstore, but I do virtually all of my book buying online.) I'm not going to slog through anything I don't enjoy, nor even buy it, simply for the sake of looking like I'm "in" and I agree that many a bestseller gets created by masses who do just that."

I agree with you here. Reading a few pages of a "best-seller" can often save you a rather fair outlay. I'm always astonished at the poor quality of the writing in most modern fiction. One thing about being an omnivorous and voracious reader: It sure teaches you how to sort out the quality of the writing. As a writer myself, I spend as much time READING my work as I do in writing it. If it doesn't "flow," out it goes. I LOVE that block-and-delete function!

[mommybain]

So are her descriptions of mountain life. But you're right, her characters are the best. I think I've met several of her characters, and am related to the rest of them!!

[MississippiMan]

I agree with you here. Reading a few pages of a "best-seller" can often save you a rather fair outlay. I'm always astonished at the poor quality of the writing in most modern fiction. One thing about being an omnivorous and voracious reader: It sure teaches you how to sort out the quality of the writing. As a writer myself, I spend as much time READING my work as I do in writing it. If it doesn't "flow," out it goes. I LOVE that block-and-delete function!

Nothing more important to a writer than reading. In his ON WRITING, Stephen King put it nicely: If you don't have time to read, you don't have time to write.

I've found that the more I grow as a writer, the harder I am to please as a reader. Gets frustrating sometimes because I find myself constantly putting books down unread--books that looked good in the opening pages but didn't hold up--that I would've devoured in years past.

MM

[MississippiMan]

BTW, what do you write?

MM

[bonfire]

My dad grew up in a small town on the Ohio River across from WVA....... my relatives are probably related to yours!

[Bernard Marx]

That sort of thing fascinates me. Along those same lines I recently picked up a remaindered book, "Technology in the Ancient World" by Henry Hodges. How much we take for granted!

[Utah Girl]

Emma is one of Jane Austen's harder books to get through. It was one of her first novels, and her writing was still a bit rough.