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Unread Bestsellers (what bestseller can you not get through?)
The Word Spy ^ | Jan, 2003

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.

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



TOPICS: Culture/Society; Miscellaneous
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To: hoosier_RW_conspirator
I even enjoyed the relatively recent "Romeo + Juliet"

You mean the movie starring "He who should have stayed sunken with the Titanic"? Ironically, that is the only movie I've watched in the last two years. I happened to be up late and it was subtitled into Japanese, not dubbed.

301 posted on 02/12/2003 9:04:04 PM PST by altair (I liked it too, but seeing it once was sufficient)
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To: Mamzelle
I loved Cold Mountain, the book. But was shocked when I heard the movie was to be filmed in Romania and that Nicole Kidman, an Aussie, would play Ada, and that Jude Law, a Brit, will play Inman. What were they thinking?

Course, everyone said Vivien Leigh was too British to play Scarlett so I suppose those Hollywood types are thinking history will repeat itself.

I also loved Seabiscuit but fear Hollywood will ruin that story too.

302 posted on 02/12/2003 9:04:40 PM PST by daisyscarlett
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To: CaliGirlGodHelpMe
The only "payoff" in the book came when he spent a chapter describing, millisecond by millisecond, what happens when a nuclear weapon detonates.

Cool. I'll make sure I get a copy. Thanks for the tip.

303 posted on 02/12/2003 9:08:51 PM PST by altair
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To: Indy Pendance
The book I can't finish is "Don Quijote".

You're not missing anything.

304 posted on 02/12/2003 9:10:15 PM PST by altair
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To: Utah Girl
"Classic."A book which people praise and don't read.

Mark Twain

305 posted on 02/12/2003 9:13:00 PM PST by Inyo-Mono
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To: Guillermo
Can't get past the first couple of pages of "Heart of Darkness".

This is one of the rare cases where I think the movie is better.

306 posted on 02/12/2003 9:13:59 PM PST by altair (I love the smell of napalm in the morning)
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To: Inyo-Mono
Great quote, and true too!!!
307 posted on 02/12/2003 9:14:11 PM PST by Utah Girl
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To: Utah Girl
I always enjoy Amy Tan books too.
308 posted on 02/12/2003 9:20:29 PM PST by 2rightsleftcoast
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To: daisyscarlett
I loved Cold Mountain too. Was surprised at casting choices and also where they are filming it.
I am keeping my hopes up for Seabiscuit. I believe Toby Mcguire is the lead and he is good.
309 posted on 02/12/2003 9:22:30 PM PST by 2rightsleftcoast
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To: Howlin
I thought I was still dreaming. I never picked it back up.

Perhaps it's just as well. The ebola attack that is the main plotline of the book still gives me nightmares. I had a similar experience to yours when reading Debt of Honor and reaching the final chapter. It was in the first week after the first Republican congress was seated.

310 posted on 02/12/2003 9:22:30 PM PST by altair (But that's OUR congress now)
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To: Guillermo
Can't get past the first couple of pages of "Heart of Darkness".

The first few pages are tough going, but it picks up when he finally gets to the Kurtz story.

311 posted on 02/12/2003 9:22:43 PM PST by Lurking Libertarian (Non sub homine, sed sub Deo et lege)
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To: Utah Girl
My personal favorite is Thomas Berger's novel, Little Big Man, a classic study of human nature and a million times better than the 1970 movie.

For "adventure - true to life" type reading, Jean-Pierre Hallet's, Congo Kitabu can't be beat.

But speaking of best sellers, after three years, I'm still working on finishing Stephen Ambrose's Lewis & Clark epic, Undaunted Courage.

312 posted on 02/12/2003 9:28:37 PM PST by Inyo-Mono
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To: CharacterCounts
The Dictionary

Every home and office has one. But nobody has read more than a few bits and pieces.

I've been through every page and looked at every word of Webster's Unabridged. I was making lists of certain words that rhymed, don't ask me why.

Does that count?

My girl friend has claimed to have read both a dictionary and an encyclopedia.

313 posted on 02/12/2003 9:37:37 PM PST by altair (but I don't believe her)
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To: Utah Girl
Thanks for this thread...I love it...I giggled when Oprah disbanded her Book Club because "there are no more good books out there"...Amazing...

I love Jeffrey Deaver-his Lincoln Rhyme books are special. Just finished the Stone Monkey and am looking forward to a new one to be released in March about a criminal illusionist.

For mystery buffs, I recommend Elizabeth George. Her series features Lord Lynley and Lady Helen...She is an American author who writes English mysteries...very, very well.

And if you want some really hillarious fun reads, the Janet Evanovich Stephanie Plum series is sidesplitting.....

314 posted on 02/12/2003 9:40:07 PM PST by daisyscarlett
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To: hoosier_RW_conspirator
Also speaking of annotated, I read an annotated Milton's Paradise Lost that was wonderful reading. My annotated Shakespeare is good, but not as good as the annotated Milton.
315 posted on 02/12/2003 9:47:09 PM PST by altair
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To: maxwell; Future Snake Eater
Thanks a lot guys. It's nice to know I'm funny when I've been drinking too much. What really bugs me is Dave Barry figured out how to get paid for doing this.
316 posted on 02/12/2003 9:51:07 PM PST by Richard Kimball
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To: daisyscarlett
Great recommendations (great minds think alike...) I'm so excited there will be a new Deaver book out in March, I'll start looking for it. Elizabeth George is excellent, as is Janet Evanovich. I also like Jan Karon, of the Mitford series of books.

Another author I really really like, and highly recommend is MM Kaye. She wrote The Far Pavilions, Shadow of the Moon, and Tradewinds, plus several mysteries. She is classified as writing historical romantic fiction, but she is spot on in her history of India. Great love stories too. One of my all time favorite authors.

317 posted on 02/12/2003 9:52:15 PM PST by Utah Girl
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To: Old Professer; altair
I have to admit, I was quite a Jim Fixx disciple in my youth, and his book got me seriously into running. I loved it, and at one point in time could do four miles at six minutes a mile and twelve miles at about 8 minutes a mile(that was thirty years ago, and no I can't now). I considered going out for the track team, but I was going to the University of Texas, and a decent runner doesn't get on the team there. Those guys were world class. Also, I was a hippie, and would never have considered cutting my hair just to get on a sports team.

Fixx was a very good writer (by that I mean his books were fun to read), and much of what he wrote was true. I never read "Games for the super-intelligent", but from what you describe, as he did in the Complete Book of Running, he wrote what he wished to be true. He outlived his father, and I believe, extended his life by running. Unfortunately, from the accounts I read of his death, he had several classic symptoms of insufficient blood to his heart, and ignored them. He refused to see a doctor, and insisted that running would cure him. I remember reading the article about how his body was found, and he was out running alone when he had his heart attack.

I felt very betrayed when I read of his death, as I started reading his books at that time of youth when you're looking for something to define yourself as a human. I fell totally into running, and actually owe Mr. Fixx a lot. When I think of some of the other things I could have gotten into at that fragile time of life, it gets pretty scary.

So I'll always have a soft spot for old Jim. In a very real way, he saved me. I was searching for something so badly then, and like most kids, I had no idea what. Spending a few years running, as opposed to running drugs, wasn't a bad way to waste part of my youth. I think I'll pull out the old jogging shoes tomorrow and slog a couple of miles. A fifty year old man sluffing along isn't nearly as impressive a 19 year old running like a gazelle, but I'll take it easy and pretend people aren't laughing at me.

318 posted on 02/12/2003 10:08:12 PM PST by Richard Kimball
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To: Richard Kimball
Good for you. No one will be laughing at you.
319 posted on 02/12/2003 10:21:13 PM PST by 2rightsleftcoast
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To: hoosier_RW_conspirator
I recall having read "The Annotated Alice" (Lewis Carroll) in high school

I still have that book. One of the things I found fascinating was the fact that Carroll hated the illustrations used in Alice. He was apparently fascinated by a young girl named Alice Liddell, and wrote the books with her in mind. She was a short, slim brunette girl with bangs, and Carroll was disturbed that the Alice depicted was heavier and had the long blonde curls.

I was disappointed to learn of Carroll's preoccupation with young girls Although there is no evidence he was a child molestor, he used to frequently photograph pre-teen girls in the nude. I am less concerned with the political symbolism than the spiritual symbolism in his books. So many of the sequences make a perfect analogy for situations in everyday life.

Whenever I hear liberals talking, I think of the sequence with Humpty Dumpty, where he states that when he pays words, they mean what HE intends them to mean. Whenever I read accounts of UFOs or ghosts, I'm reminded of the sequence in the store where all the shelves are full, but when she looks directly at one shelf, it's empty. All the other shelves are full around it, but whatever shelf she's looking at is empty.

In the Alice books, I always felt that Carroll's work defined a thought process and a sequence of patterns of reality. It's difficult to describe, because, like the space between the chair arm and a chair, no word has ever been created to describe it. Like most great authors, Carroll, IMHO, had one great book in him. I thought that was "Through the Looking Glass."

320 posted on 02/12/2003 10:24:34 PM PST by Richard Kimball
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