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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: justshutupandtakeit
Glad to know that I am not alone in thinking that Rand is an awful writer.
321 posted on 02/12/2003 11:11:28 PM PST by Irish Eyes
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To: Richard Kimball
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.

One of the books that I was force-fed in high school was 'Earth Abides'. It is set in the forties or fifties in a post-apocalyptic San Francisco area, which happens to be where I live.

It is an interesting look at society and human nature. I keep a copy around, and still drag it out from time to time to re-read. It is kind of weird seeing the Seventies written about as the distant future.

Jack London wrote a similar work as well, IIRC.

322 posted on 02/12/2003 11:36:27 PM PST by Riley
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To: Richard Kimball
I have to admit, I was quite a Jim Fixx disciple in my youth, and his book got me seriously into running.

I wasn't a disciple and I was already on the varsity track and cross country teams by the time I got any of his writings on running, but I will always remember the Jim Fixx runner's diary which I used diligently to record all my practice, race times, weight, etc. etc. every day. I still have it around somewhere for nostalgia, though as an old man I can only look in wonder at what I used to be able to do every day in high school.

323 posted on 02/13/2003 12:17:32 AM PST by altair
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To: Utah Girl
I love DI, I have to be careful though, I usually end up with taking more stuff home than I donated. :)

I won't let my husband go alone, although truthfully, I'm worse. But we always leave with at least an armful of hardbacks.

324 posted on 02/13/2003 7:02:00 AM PST by T Minus Four
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To: daisyscarlett
I giggled when Oprah disbanded her Book Club because "there are no more good books out there"...Amazing...

I have received as gifts several book from Oprah's club and didn't enjoy any of them very much. I HATE fiction in which people live miserable lives, although if it's a true story, somehow it's ennobling and inspiring I suppose:-)

Anyway, one of the books was Icy Sparks. I finished it, but don't read it. Miserable, horrible people!

325 posted on 02/13/2003 7:10:40 AM PST by T Minus Four ("I cannot live without books" Thomas Jefferson)
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To: altair
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.

I'm sorry, I tried to fight it, but enquiring minds want to know (call it morbid fascination).

WHY???!!!

326 posted on 02/13/2003 7:13:49 AM PST by T Minus Four ("I cannot live without books" Thomas Jefferson)
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To: JJDKII
While I enjoyed Emma I consider P&P one of the greatest novels ever. There are few funnier. I enjoy all of Jane's writings even the minor and never truly completed ones. I have yet to see any of the new movies of her books though.

Don't recall tangling with you on other issues. But an Austen fan can't be all bad.
327 posted on 02/13/2003 7:54:25 AM PST by justshutupandtakeit
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To: Utah Girl
I have never read MM Kaye but will check her out. Thanks for the suggestion.

Evanovich and George both have new books coming out in July, Evanovich's (To the Nines) was supposed to be released on June 15 but the publisher delayed it a month because there is a new Harry Potter book coming out in June.

Elizabeth George also published recently a book of short stories which are very good. She is an excellent British historian, having studied there and she lives there part of the time as well.

I also like Sue Grafton-her latest was one of the better ones in the alphabet series.

It will be a treat to get another Deaver book featuring Lincoln Rhyme-he usually only does him every other year. Long before CSI and CSI-Miami we enjoyed Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs, CSIs extraordinaire!

328 posted on 02/13/2003 12:10:20 PM PST by daisyscarlett (Hollywood sure botched up their Lincoln Rhymes movie-terrible casting!)
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To: T Minus Four
I try to avoid those Oprah books. But I have a friend who keeps shoving them onto me, always begging me to read this one, "you will really, really like it." I have finished few and liked none....The worst one I can recall reading was something about little kids drowning and all sorts of vile, evil people. Something about a Blue Dress in the title. I hated it...But it was short and "easy" to read....
329 posted on 02/13/2003 12:14:50 PM PST by daisyscarlett (I am so happy the Oprah Book Club is out of business!!!)
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To: daisyscarlett
Thanks for the recommendations and heads up on the new books. I've got the titles on my books to read list. Isn't Grafton about due for another book release? Nope, I just checked amazon.com, Q is for Quarry was released in Oct, 2002.
330 posted on 02/13/2003 2:42:29 PM PST by Utah Girl
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To: Travis McGee
Yep, I tried that too, but eventually I gave up on even that.
331 posted on 02/13/2003 3:43:47 PM PST by CaliGirlGodHelpMe
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To: justshutupandtakeit
"Pride and Prejudice is hilarious..."

I totally agree with you, I love that book and read it about every 6 months or so, just to remind me that it's great to be a "lady".
332 posted on 02/13/2003 3:52:00 PM PST by CaliGirlGodHelpMe
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To: CaliGirlGodHelpMe
In the Clancy book I skip-read, there was a sub plot involving a cement truck loaded with explosives heading for Washington, being driven, I think, by a couple of rednecks.

Every 10th or so scene involved that cement truck-bomb, on its way to DC.

Then the book was over, and the cement truck just... ?????

It was just dropped! Must have been 75 pages spent on that sub plot, and it just went away! POOF! Like Clancy forgot it! Incredible.

333 posted on 02/13/2003 4:04:24 PM PST by Travis McGee (----- www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com -----)
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To: Xenalyte
I've read Beowulf through several times, and last time I read it I made a point to read portions out loud. The Seamus Heaney translation is generaly very crisp, with a strong semblance to the spirit of the original- here and there he drags a bit, but not terribly often. And the story is straight-forward, but not sparse: there is a richness of culture that pervades each line, and the characters seem real (though Beowulf himself sometimes stretches one's belief here and there).
334 posted on 02/13/2003 4:15:45 PM PST by Cleburne
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To: altair

In that book he wrote of a dieting scheme involving drinking Scotch on the Rocks and doing an elaborate calculation on how much energy was expended in melting the scotch and the ice inside the stomach to prove that it would work.
 

And every day, I'm eternally grateful that this theory doesn't apply to Irish whiskey.

You can look it up.

335 posted on 02/13/2003 4:20:36 PM PST by Fintan (Cupid, draw back your bow...)
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To: beckett
I would say Joyce's Ulysses is unfinished by many who buy it, though they may start into it with the best of intentions.

You have to get into the rhythm of it, almost in a trance. It's hard work. I tackled it a half dozen times before I got all the way through.

I prefer Dubliners and to a lesser extent, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. In these works Joyce is accessible and his prose is wonderful.

But Finnegan's Wake is inpenetrable. To my ears it is a series a psychotic klang phrases and nonsense noises. I cannot digest more than a page or three at a sitting. I have neither the patience nor the decades to waste finding a way to enjoy it.

336 posted on 02/13/2003 4:31:59 PM PST by Kevin Curry
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To: Kevin Curry
I prefer Dubliners and to a lesser extent, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. In these works Joyce is accessible and his prose is wonderful.

One of the greatest closing paragrphs ever written, from Dubliners: The Dead

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

337 posted on 02/13/2003 5:19:09 PM PST by beckett
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To: TheFilter; chookter
"Vineland" by Thomas Pynchon.

((( Shudder )))

I actually read that one cover to cover. Was that a best seller? I can't believe it? But then, of course, I can't belive Bill Clinton was elected president - what do I know?

On the other hand, I did read The Bell Curve cover to cover in 1994. That was a real eye opener. There's been nary a day since that I haven't seen some connection to human behavior and its relation to I.Q. scores as posited in that book.

I think that Vineland is one of those books that people, who fancy themselves placed much farther to right on the bell curve than they actually are, read and pretend that they understand. They're probably the same people who voted for Bill Clinton and encouraged those who are placed on the left side of the bell curve to do the same.

338 posted on 02/13/2003 5:21:31 PM PST by Prolixus
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To: Old Professer
A man cannot know everything, but everyone has to have something he knows thoroughly.

Gustav Freytag.

(Hands free. No pencil or pen.)

339 posted on 02/13/2003 5:25:29 PM PST by Lonesome in Massachussets
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To: Utah Girl
FWIW, some of my favorites:
(not necessarily in order)

'The Fires of Spring' - James Michner
'Tales of the South Pacific' - James Michner
'Dandelion Wine' - Ray Bradbury
'Papillon' - Henri Charriare
'The Count of Monte Cristo' - Alexandre Dumas
'Trinity' - Leon Uris
'Exodus' - Leon Uris
'Flags of our Fathers' - James Bradley
'Goodbye Darkness' - William Manchester
The Bounty Trilogy - Nordhoff & Hall
'In the Heart of the Sea' - Nathaniel Philbrick
'The Grapes of Wrath' - Steinbeck
'East of Eden' - Steinbeck
'Of Mice and Men' - Steinbeck
'Call of the Wild' - Jack London
'Captains Courageous' - Kipling
'West with the Night' - Beryl Markham
'Slaughterhouse Five' - Kurt Vonnegut
'Sirens of Titan' - Kurt Vonnegut
'The Liars Club' - Mary Karr
'Cold Mountain' - Charles Frazier
'Confederacy of Dunces' - John Kennedy Toole
'Catch 22' - Joseph Heller...

....that's all for now....

340 posted on 02/13/2003 6:23:38 PM PST by dogbrain (Communists and fissionable material don't mix.....)
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