Oprah's Book Club was abook discussion club segment of theAmericantalk showThe Oprah Winfrey Show, highlighting books chosen by hostOprah Winfrey. Winfrey started the book club in 1996, selecting a new book, usually anovel, for viewers to read and discuss each month.[1][2][3] In total, the club recommended 70 books during its 15 years.
Due to the book club's widespread popularity, many obscure titles have become very popularbestsellers, increasing sales in some cases by as many as several million copies.[4] Al Greco, aFordham University marketing professor, estimated the total sales of the 70 "Oprah editions" at over 55 million copies.[1]
The club has seen several literary controversies, such asJonathan Franzen's public dissatisfaction with his novel,The Corrections, having been chosen by Winfrey,[1] and the incident ofJames Frey's memoir,A Million Little Pieces, being outed as almost entirety fabricated.[1] The latter controversy resulted in Frey and publisherNan Talese being confronted and publicly shamed by Winfrey in a highly praised live televised episode of Winfrey's show.[5]
On June 1, 2012, Oprah announced the launch ofOprah's Book Club 2.0 withWild byCheryl Strayed. The new version of Oprah's Book Club, a joint project betweenOWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network andO, The Oprah Magazine, incorporates the use of various social media platforms and e-readers.
On March 25, 2019,Apple Inc. and Oprah announced arevival of Oprah's Book Club that aired onApple TV+.[6][7]
The book club's first selection on September 17, 1996, was the then recently published novelThe Deep End of the Ocean byJacquelyn Mitchard.[1] Winfrey discontinued the book club for one year in 2002, stating that she could not keep up with the required reading while still searching for contemporary novels that she enjoyed.[8] After its revival in 2003, books were selected on a more limited basis (three or four a year).
Winfrey returned to fiction with her 2007 selections ofThe Road byCormac McCarthy in March andMiddlesex byJeffrey Eugenides in June. Shortly after its being chosen,The Road was awarded thePulitzer Prize for Fiction. Winfrey conducted the first ever television interview with McCarthy, a famously reclusive author, on June 5, 2007.[9]
The October 2007 selection wasLove in the Time of Cholera, a 1985 novel byNobel Prize laureateGabriel García Márquez, greatly furthering not only the influence of the author in North America, but that of his translatorEdith Grossman. Another work by Márquez,One Hundred Years of Solitude, was a previous selection for the book club in 2004.[10]
The last club selection was a special edition ofCharles Dickens'A Tale of Two Cities andGreat Expectations.[3] It had disappointingly low sales figures.[1]
InReading with Oprah: The Book Club That Changed America,Kathleen Rooney describes Winfrey as "a serious Americanintellectual who pioneered the use of electronic media, specificallytelevision and theInternet, to take reading—a decidedly non-technological and highly individual act—and highlight its social elements and uses in such a way to motivate millions oferstwhile non-readers to pick up books."[11]
Business Week stated:
Perhaps the most astonishing aspect of the Oprah phenomenon is how outsized her power is compared with that of other market movers. Some observers suggest thatJon Stewart ofComedy Central'sThe Daily Show could be No. 2. Other proven arm-twisters includeFox News'sSean Hannity,National Public Radio'sTerry Gross,radio personalityDon Imus, andCBS'60 Minutes. But no one comes close to Oprah's clout: Publishers estimate that her power to sell a book is anywhere from 20 to 100 times that of any other media personality.[12]
In 2009, it was reported that the influence of Winfrey's book club had even spread toBrazil, with picks likeA New Earth dominating Brazil's best-seller list.[13]
The club generated so much success for some books that they went on to be adapted into films. This subset includesThe Deep End of the Ocean andThe Reader.[citation needed]
At the show's conclusion in May 2011,Nielsen BookScan created a list of the top-10 bestsellers from the club's final 10 years (prior data was unavailable).[2] The top four with sales figures as of May 2011:[14]
In a 2014 paper by economistCraig L. Garthwaite published inAmerican Economic Journal: Applied Economics, it was reported that while the book club increased sales of individual titles in the list, it caused a short-term overall decrease in sales for the book industry as a whole after each selection was announced.[15] Since Oprah's selections were longer and more difficult classics that demanded greater time and energy to read, those people who were reading Oprah's books were not buying their usual fare of genre books: "there were statistically significant decreases for mysteries and action/adventure novels. Romances also saw a sales decline," following an Oprah endorsement. In the 12 weeks following an endorsement, "weekly adult fiction book sales decreased by a statistically significant 2.5 percent."[16]
The club has received critical commentaries from the literary community.
Scott Stossel, an editor atThe Atlantic, wrote:
There is something so relentlesslytherapeutic, so consciouslyself-improving about the book club that it seems antithetical to discussions of serious literature. Literature should disturb the mind and derange the senses; it can be palliative, but it is not meant to be the easy, soothing one that Oprah would make it.[1]
According to Alyson Miller, Winfrey’s role in publicly endorsing a series ofliterary frauds, including James Frey,Herman Rosenblat'sAngel at the Fence[17] (planned to be published in 2009 but cancelled) andMargaret B. Jones'Love and Consequences[18] (2008), highlights how literary value is shaped by celebrity endorsement, market forces, andmass media rather than elite institutions alone.Fake memoir scandals are according to Miller revealing because many achieved enormous commercial success before exposure, demonstrating the power of the "Oprah Effect," whereby book club selections gain instant authority and visibility. Much of Winfrey’s promoted literature centred on trauma, survival, and marginalised identities, aligning literary prestige withmoral seriousness and ethical consumption.[19]
Similarly, academic writerAnne Rothe contends that Winfrey’s book club and talk show helped transformmisery memoirs ofautobiographical suffering into a morally elevated, commercially successfulgenre. She discusses Winfrey in the context of populartrauma culture and argues that daytime talk shows like Oprah turn personal suffering into "traumakitsch"—amelodramatic, commodified representation of pain andvictimhood that mirrors the sensational structure of modern medianarratives. Rothe places Oprah’s show alongside other mass-media genres to show how victimhood and suffering are packaged asspectacle, contributing to cultural patterns that shape how audiencesconsume stories of trauma and identity in American society.[20]
Jonathan Franzen felt conflicted about his bookThe Corrections being chosen as a book club selection. After the announcement was made, he expressed distaste with being in the company of other Oprah's Book Club authors, saying in an interview that Winfrey had "picked some good books, but she's picked enough schmaltzy, one-dimensional ones that I cringe, myself, even though I think she's really smart and she's really fighting the good fight."[21] Franzen added that his novel was a "hard book for that audience."[22]
Following the criticism Franzen was uninvited from the televised book club dinner, and he apologized profusely.[23] When Franzen was not invited back, he suggested that perhaps he and Winfrey could still have dinner but not on TV, but Winfrey was all booked up, and her spokesperson said she was moving on.[22]
Other writers were critical of Franzen. Writing inThe New York Times, authorVerlyn Klinkenborg suggested that "lurking behind Mr. Franzen's rejection of Ms. Winfrey is an elemental distrust of readers, except for the ones he designates."[24] AuthorAndre Dubus III wrote that, "It is so elitist it offends me deeply. The assumption that high art is not for the masses, that they won't understand it and they don't deserve it – I find that reprehensible. Is that a judgment on the audience? Or on the books in whose company he would be?"[23]
In 2010, Oprah chose another of Franzen's books,Freedom, for her book club. She said that after she read a copy of the book Franzen had sent her with a note, she called the author and gained his permission.[25] Oprah said, "we have a little history this author and I", but called the book "a masterpiece", and according to an article in theLos Angeles Times, she "seems to have forgiven the bestselling author after their 2001 kerfuffle".[25][26]
In late 2005 and early 2006, Oprah's Book Club was again involved in controversy. Winfrey selectedJames Frey'sA Million Little Pieces for the September 2005 selection.Pieces is a book billed as amemoir—a true account of Frey's life as analcoholic,drug addict, and criminal. It became the Book Club's greatest selling book up to that point, and many readers spoke of how the account helped free them from drugs as well. But the additional attention focused on Frey's memoir soon led to critics questioning the validity of Frey's supposedly true account, especially regarding his treatment while in arehabilitation facility and his stories of time spent in jail. Initially, Frey convincedLarry King that the embellishments in his book were of a sort that could be found in any literary memoir; Winfrey encouraged debate about how creative non-fiction should be classified, and cited the inspirational impact Frey's work had had on so many of her viewers. But as more accusations against the book surfaced, Winfrey invited Frey on the show to find out directly from him whether he had lied to her and her viewers. During a heated live televised debate, Winfrey forced Frey to admit that he had indeed lied about spending time in jail, and that he had no idea whether he had tworoot canals without painkillers or not, despite devoting several pages to describing them in excruciating detail. Winfrey then brought out Frey's publisherNan Talese to defend her decision to classify the book as a memoir, and forced Talese to admit that she had done nothing to check the book's veracity, despite the fact that her representatives had assured Winfrey's staff that the book was indeed non-fiction and described it as "brutally honest" in a press release.
The media commented on the televised showdown.David Carr ofThe New York Times wrote: "Both Mr. Frey and Ms. Talese were snapped in two like dry winter twigs."[5] "Oprah annihilates Frey," proclaimed Larry King.[27]New York Times columnistMaureen Dowd wrote, "It was a huge relief, after our long national slide into untruth and no consequences, intoSwift boating and swift bucks, intoW.'s delusion and denial, to see the Empress of Empathy icily hold someone accountable for lying,"[28] andThe Washington Post'sRichard Cohen was so impressed by the confrontation, that he crowned Winfrey "Mensch of the Year."[29]
Source:[30]
The original book club ended with the conclusion ofThe Oprah Winfrey Show in 2011. SeeOprah's Book Club 2.0 for the selections of the club's 2012 relaunch.
On March 25, 2019,Apple Inc. and Oprah announced arevival of Oprah's Book Club that was released onApple TV+.[6][7]
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