Posted on 02/11/2003 9:49:20 PM PST by Utah Girl
unread bestseller
(UN.red best.sel.ur) n. A book that many people purchase but few read in its entirety.
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, 2002Backgrounder:
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
Panthos (enters): "Alark, a staveth dost thou pass?"
Peretinitus (already there): "Aye, aye, and a knavest staveth to the end!"
Bursitus (falling from the ceiling): Tis well, tis well."
Dittoes for Atlas Shrugged. I never even got far enough to find out who is John Galt? I assumed he was the rich guy who made the guy that tried to bankrupt the railroad in Mexico do it, and that he was the force behind the force, but by the time people had looked at each other mockingly for about the 30,000th time, I didn't really care who John Galt was.
I made it through Moby Dick until the 600 page essay on whale types. That kind of slowed down the plot.
I usually enjoy Tom Wolfe, but I just couldn't get into A Man in Full. I'm sure that's my shortcoming, not his. A lot of Freeps love it.
90% of college textbooks are total garbage. From my original college days, I kept "History of Art".
On the super lame-o books that were really popular until people figured out how incredibly stupid they are, I put Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Watership Down.
And don't forget, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the Crucible, and all the other books they force down your throat in high school english today.
Jim Fixx dying of a heart attack after writing about how running would make us live forever was kind of a bummer.
I had to read about 3/4 of the Fire Protection Handbook by NFPA for a promotional test. It's several thousand pages about things like chemicals used in semi-conductor processing. That hurt, but I made the promotion, and for several years I could quote the exact dimensions of the machine used for the Steiner tunnel test.
Stephen King could write a good novel if someone would walk in and tell him, you know, most books have this thing called a plot. After he's finished telling the story, he writes another 500 pages for no particular reason.
All the Joe Weider body-building books are amazing. These guys get built like that, and NONE of them uses steroids (btw, that was sarcasm).
You can count on one thing with almost any book written by a sports figure. The book wasn't really written by the sports figure. Anybody believe Shaquille O'Neal has ever even read a book?
I'm on about page 50. I can tell it's going to be a long haul.
I suspect worth it though.
ROTFLMAO! So TRUE!!
I never was able to finish even part of a page.
Only a perverted psychopath could read it.
On the other hand, I loved The Corrections as well as Pears' novels, including The Corrections and Dream of Scipio.
Some of my latest favorites have been The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason, Paradise Alley by Kevin Baker, and The Crimson Petal and the White by Michael Faber. Also Latitudes of Melt by Joan Clark. Anyway, good reading.
I'm on about page 100. I can tell it's going to be a long haul.
I suspect worth it though. Maybe.
Me too. Luckily, I bought it at a garage sale. Now some poor soul probably bought it at Goodwill after I gave it up.
A couple of Martin Amis novels are on the list. I just cannot get into him. Or Tolkien either, for that matter.
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