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

[MHT]

Persuasion is a far superior Austen--and shorter. Great movie, too, just in case you can't get through the book.

[MHT]

Henry James' structure isn't a cake-walk, either.

[MHT]

The Hours was also awful. It wasn't work the time it took to buy it muchless read it--and that was alot longer than an hour! It was the ultimate formula book and now to think that people are raving about the movie version, complete with Oscar nominations!

[MHT]

James Joyce is not an upper. Someone found the original text of Ulysses complete with his editorial notations and found out that the book was full of errors, which overly-studious English teachers had given undeserved "deep" meaning and symbolic significance for decades. To think that they were just typos!

[CaliGirlGodHelpMe]

I did my utmost to get through "The Sum of All Fears" but Clancy's military technic minutiae finally did me in. The only "payoff" in the book came when he spent a chapter describing, millisecond by millisecond, what happens when a nuclear weapon detonates.

[hoosier_RW_conspirator]

It's a mistake to judge Shakespeare by his writing. His work was meant to be performed and watched.

Absolutely. Shakespeare, performed, has a pace and rhythm that is very difficult to perceive when reading. Much more enjoyable to watch than read (I even enjoyed the relatively recent "Romeo + Juliet"...[scurrying into my flameproof underwear ;-)]).

[Indy Pendance]

I read "Atlas Shrugged" three times. The first time, I read about the first 10 pages of the chapter, 'John Galt Speaks', next two times, just skipped that chapter.

The book I can't finish is "Don Quijote".

[Trust but Verify]

Count me in the couldn't get through Atlas Shruggedcategory.

[Trust but Verify]

Executive Orders was great. I haven't made it through Rainbow Warrior, Red Rabbit, or The Bear and the Dragon though.

[Doctor Stochastic]

I really liked "The Name of the Rose" but I couldn't get through "Satanic Verses" or even "Doctor Zhivago." "Doctor Zhivago" didn't seem uninteresting, I just didn't finish it. "Satanic Verses" was turgid at its best.

[BlueLancer]

The Bible - finished it
A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking - finished it (great book)
The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie - never started
The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco - finished it (great book)
The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom - never started
Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak - couldn't finish
Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon - never started
The Bell Curve, Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein - finished it
The End of History, Francis Fukuyama - finished it (great book)
Beowulf, Seamus Heaney (trans.) - finished it (difficult but good)
Moby Dick, Herman Melville - finished it (great book)

The one that I've started at least a dozen times but could never finish was "War and Peace". I could never keep all of the names in my head and was constantly mixing characters and dialogue.

[Snowy]

"The Stone Diaries" was apparently one of those books you either loved or hated. I hated it. Stopped at page 100.

I also read Toni Morrison's "Paradise", which was the worst book I actually got all the way through.

[BlueLancer]

"The Bear and the Dragon" was a good read.

The other two, though, I felt were trash.

[BluH2o]

Probably one of the more over hyped books, was the novel "Cold Mountain" by Charles Frazier. "Cold Mountain" was on the NY Times best seller list and a Nat'l Book Award finalist back in 1997. I managed about three chapters before finally giving up on it ... and I purchased the hard back edition, which occupies a space in my office/study bookcase still unread.

[Cincinatus]

However, Eco's next book was incomprehensible. Couldn't get very far in it and forgot the name.

Eco's book following The Name of the Rose was Foucault’s Pendulum. I loved both of them -- TNOTR was both a first class mystery and an intriguing look into the medieval mind set. FP was a very funny satire about belief in global conspiracies. I would think it required reading for FReepers!

[Alouette]

I actually liked The Name of the Rose. The movie (with Sean Connery) was pretty good too. But I could not get through Foucault's Pendulum.

J.D. Salinger wrote a couple of "books" after the classic Catcher in the Rye which are totally unreadable.

I also failed to finish anything written by Joyce Carol Oates.

[ofMagog]

You are correct. Shakespeare is to be seen more than read. He was a master of the language. Read the following aloud to yourself and you will want to pick up a sword and join Henry.

"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;"

Westmoreland :
"Oh, but if we had but one more from England here this day."

Enter Henry:
If we are mark'd to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires:
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England:
God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more, methinks, would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.
--KING HENRY V, Act IV, Scene III

[bonfire]

Just watch the movie. Extrememly well done. One of my favorites.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

I'm in the minority but I really do like Pynchon. I'm about a third through Mason & Dixon now and it may be his very best book. I've read Gravity's Rainbow, V, Vineland, and the Crying of Lot 49.

Pynchon from what I understand is a 60's counter-culture holdover, but I do enjoy his writing. I don't claim to understand all of what he is trying to say but I seem to like how he says it.

I can definitely see why some might prefer not to bother.

[Xenalyte]

I'm with you on <>iMoby-Dick. I have an MA in English, and from high school through grad school, I was assigned to read it six times. I never once got past page 100.

Boooooooring.