Is Oprah’s Book Club all that bad?

Last month I wrote about The Lovely Bones and The Road being turned into films, and how (correct me if I’m wrong) both novels are part of Oprah’s Book Club. Her latest pick is The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski, and while I haven’t read it yet it was the selection for my book club two months and our group tends to pick some pretty good reads, if I do say so myself (apologies to my book club for missing yet another great meeting!). So if Oprah is choosing good books and people are liking these good books, then why do some people see the Oprah Book Club as a pejorative statement of what is good literature?

Check out the Oprah Book Club official selections list. Some pretty good stuff there, and some great literary talent:

If I’m not allowed to gripe about how kids read tons of Harry Potter books but nothing else, and the reason I’m not allowed to gripe about it is because at least kids are reading, isn’t it also true that people shouldn’t get to gripe about Oprah getting millions of people who wouldn’t normally think of picking up a book to not only read something great but to read regularly?

Maybe I just want my cake and read it, too.

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Support the bookstore or the writer?

I started reading Nerd World, a nerdy, nerdy blog co-written by Time Magazine writer Lev Grossman and The Simpsons executive producer and writer Matt Selman, because of Selman’s connection to my favorite show. Selman was also nice enough to donate Simpsons scripts to a giant trivia Simpsons trivia contest I organized in the housing & residence life system at the University of Minnesota back in 2002 so not only is he a funny writer he’s a cool guy. What’s nice about Nerd World, however, is there’s plenty to keep a reader there, so consider subscribing to the blog.

But all of this is preamble to today’s blog post, inspired by the “moral dilemma” Matt Selman puts to his readers this week regarding where to buy a book online. He writes:

Writing About a Utopia

If you’re going with the idea that wherever characters are gathered is a utopia, remember there is no such thing as a utopia. It usually takes an outsider to see it. The insiders love where and when they are. And even if they don’t, they have put themselves – or one of their own has put them – into the mindset that whatever sacrifices are required to create what appears to be a utopia is worth the price.

The outsider needs to experience the world before denouncing it. It has to be a place they’ve always known in their heart they NEED to (actually, THINK they need to) explore and be a part of. It has to look so good, better than they thought it would be even. They need to see the flaws emerge, though, and be torn by them. Conflict of the heart. All of that needs to happen in a perfect, utopian story of experiencing a utopia.

Or, it doesn’t.

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“The War of Art” for-two-bucks sale is here!

I warned you last week and now it’s time. Get your credit card ready to pay a measly little $1.99 to get your electronic copy of Steven Pressfield’s phenominal book, The War of Art. It’s on sale today and tomorrow with a price spike after that so get in while the sale is good.

FastPencil offers the book in both .epub and .pdf formats. I’m still new to electronic books (I still don’t have a Kindle, though my relatively-new Droid X displays Kindle books, no sweat) and thought I may have more use for a .pdf file. At least, I know what I can do or not do with it and so that’s the route I went. If anyone wants to tell me why .epub is the better route to go, I’m all ears and willing to shell out another $1.99 for one of the most inspirational books about changing my life I’ve ever read.

Does that last sentence sell you, dear reader?

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Elmore Leonard’s new book, Djibouti, has arrived!

Elmore Leonard is pretty much my favorite writer ever (I say that today; tomorrow I might say Neil Gaiman, the next day I might say Walt Whitman but for today let’s stick with Dutch).

Monday was Elmore Leonard’s 85th birthday, his fortieth novel, Djibouti, came out on Tuesday, and the trailer for the second season of the FX series Justified came out Wednesday. Three great reasons to celebrate what a prolific, generous writer has gifted readers like me. Here’s the man, the book, and the video after the jump:

“War of Art” for two bucks.

Steven Pressfield announced the eBook version of his excellent, inspiring, and challenging book on creativity The War of Art will be on sale next week, October 20 and 21, for only $1.99.  He’s working with a company called FastPencil to get the job done (while Amazon reported they sold more Kindle books than hardcover books this summer, the Amazon Kindle version of this book has a few kinks to work out, apparently, if you read Stephen’s post) and if you miss the sale it will still be available for a fairly low price beyond the sale dates, according to Stephen.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you can see what I’ve written about The War of Art on this blog here.

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Writing with the door closed.

One of my favorite books on writing is, well, On Writing by Stephen King. I’ve never actually read it, only listened to it. I first heard the audio version in 2002 and ever since I have listened to it at least once a year, usually right at the beginning of the fall semester, as a sort of rejuvenation of my writing spirit. King reads the book himself and it’s a great presentation. I’ve heard it so many times – and enjoy it so much, to be honest – that listening to it at the end of September, I had fun seeing how many times I could say the lines right along with Stephen. Surprisingly, or perhaps not-so surprisingly, it happened pretty frequently. I guess you could say I’m a King convert when it comes to many of his ideas about writing. I have close to ten copies of the book in its print form, by the way, and they get loaned out to friends on occasion (and were used by the Ron Book Team last week for the October book club discussion) if you’re in the area and we’re on first-name basis.

I’m writing today to bring forth one of King’s great ideas, one he cribbed from a newspaper editor he worked with in high school: