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 loved the first 100 pages or so of Moby Dick because it was so adventurous, and then Melville changed and we got endless pages of describing how the rope was wound in the boat. I finished it, but only because it was required in my high school AP class.

[Utah Girl]

I couldn't get into 'Left Behind' either. I tried reading the first book, and just couldn't finish it.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Every home and office has [a dictionary]. But nobody has read more than a few bits and pieces.

Not true. I used to peruse the dictionary and read definitions and etymology of lots of words. I remember [boasting?] to a guy at work that I knew the meaning of every word in my Webster's College Dictionary. Picked it up and challenged me to define "nephrectomy", to which I replied, "Surgical removal of the kidney." He didn't come back. I always get the word origins category on Jeopary!

[Utah Girl]

I totally forgot about Toni Morrison. I used to belong to an online Oprah book club, and Oprah just loved Morrison's writing. I think she chose three of her books to read. Blech, I think Paradise was the one I finished, and really could have cared less about. After that if I didn't get into a book after 75 pages or so, I didn't bother to finish it.

And I just thought of another book that a lot of people love and I detested: Lonesome Dove. One of the most depressing books I've ever read, and it took me 150 pages to get into it.

[Utah Girl]

Jane Austen is one of my favorite authors. Persuaion and Pride & Prejudice are just great novels.

[Chemist_Geek]

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!

I have great difficulty doing that - whenever I read my writing, which is 75% technical and 20+% political, I already know what I'm saying. I cannot seem to get outside myself and approach the prose as another reader who does not have access to my mind's definitions and chain of reasoning. Do you have any techniques you use?

[Utah Girl]

I hated Paradise also. I read it for a book club, and so still confused at the end of the book about what had happened and who did what to whom. I'll never read another Toni Morrison book again, for many reasons.

[CharacterCounts]

Not true. I used to peruse the dictionary and read definitions and etymology of lots of words. I remember [boasting?] to a guy at work that I knew the meaning of every word in my Webster's College Dictionary. Picked it up and challenged me to define "nephrectomy", to which I replied, "Surgical removal of the kidney." He didn't come back. I always get the word origins category on Jeopary!

Hence, your handle.

[Utah Girl]

I belonged to an online Oprah bookclub for about 4 years. After I finally figured out that Oprah was only going to pick out the books about women who had tragedy in their lives, but overcame it in spite of all odds and bad men, I quit reading her picks. And it just killed me when she stopped the book club because there weren't any other good books out there that she felt she could recommend. Arghhh. Well, yeah, if all you are looking for are dysfunctional books.

[Snowy]

If you want a really funny book, I'd recommend "Beginner's Luck" by Laura Pedersen. It's new and is probably the best book I've read in over a year. It got very good reviews on Amazon. I always check Amazon reviews before reading a book, because I don't want to waste my time and money on another "Paradise".

[BigBobber]

Why should I look it up when I know you'd do it for me?

[Utah Girl]

That's what I have started doing. My public library is pathetic, so I end up buying most of the books I read. But I'm much more picky now, I'll either read the excerpts on Amazon, or read part at the bookstore before I buy a book.

[Snowy]

half.com is your friend. :)

[Utah Girl]

I think the Pride & Prejudice by A&E miniseries is one of the best of all time. Mr Darcy: hubba hubba, Jennifer Ehle was Elizabeth Bennet, and the rest of the cast simply superb. I think the actress who played Mrs Bennet could have toned it down just a bit, but that is about all I can think of what was slightly off.

[Utah Girl]

Thanks for the recommendation. I simply love to read and am always on the lookout for new books.

[Utah Girl]

I love half.com as well as powells.com. And Amazon also links to people selling books, a lot of times I can get new books for less than half the retail price. And Alibris...can you tell I am a book junkie? :)

[Lurking Libertarian]

I haven't read to the end of this thread yet, so I don't know if anyone else has mentioned this, but I remeber The Gulag Archipelago being on the best seller list for months, and I doubt that many of those who bought it read it all the way through.

[bonfire]

One of the best recent books I've read is "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" by Dave Eggers. It's exactly what the title suggests.

[Lurking Libertarian]

what's interesting is some of the books mentioned here were not bestsellers but "Nosellers"... Shakespeare too published almost nothing in his lifetime.

Shakespeare's plays were wildly popular in his lifetime, as plays. Scripts of plays were virtually never published in book form in Elizabethan times (just as movie or TV scripts are not usually published today). It was only because of Shakespeare's great popularity that his plays were published at all (I think either late in his life or shortly after his death).

[Utah Girl]

I read it all the way through, as well as One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich. Opened my eyes to the reality of the Soviet system...