Good News For Living Authors

By Rachelle Bowden in Arts & Entertainment on Sep 23, 2005 7:22PM

Oprah's decided to throw a bone to authors who are like.. uh.. alive. For the past 2 years her popular book club has only featured classic books, but now she's returning to the present, announcing yesterday that her book club will now feature all books, including contemporary works. She made this announcement as she told the world her latest book club pick - James Frey's "A Million Little Pieces," which is a memoir of his substance abuse. This book is both current, being published only a couple years ago, and it's also a work of nonfiction.

Of course it's always a good thing to be featured in Oprah's bookclub because all of her millions of minions go out and buy the book regardless of price or subject matter. Frey's publisher has just commissioned a new printing of 600,000 books to gear up for the surge of people heading out to buy the book. Already on Thursday night, "A Million Little Pieces" took down Harry Potter to become No. 1 on Amazon.com.

Oprah says the reason she's only been recommending classics for the last couple years is becuase she didn't feel like there was any good contemporary stuff that she absolutely wanted to recommend on a monthly basis. With all of Oprah's shopping drama and life saving activities and her show and everything, do you think she really reads a book a month?

What's curious is that last spring about 100 writers, including Jane Smiley and Jhumpa Lahiri wrote a letter to Oprah pretty much begging her to choose contemporary writers for her book club. They said that her abandonment of newer works was hurting sales. Nothing like being jealous of dead writers like Steinbeck & Faulkner.