{"id":322,"date":"2008-03-25T20:07:59","date_gmt":"2008-03-26T01:07:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/?p=322"},"modified":"2008-03-25T20:07:59","modified_gmt":"2008-03-26T01:07:59","slug":"oprah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/?p=322","title":{"rendered":"Oprah"},"content":{"rendered":"

Would you trust this woman with your summer reading?<\/p>\n

I was talking to a friend today who mentioned that she was planning to give away some books. She has a lot of science fiction, some random books on Africa, and a few crappy Oprah books.<\/p>\n

“Crappy Oprah books?” I asked. Of course, she was talking about the Oprah book club thing, where Oprah whispers the name of a book and the author can suddenly afford caviar for breakfast.<\/p>\n

I don’t watch Oprah, I don’t pay attention to Oprah, and I don’t care what book she’s chosen for her club. But I have noticed that she’s chosen some pretty good stuff. Not crap at all.<\/p>\n

I had a look at the books she’s picked over the last twelve years, and here are the ones I’ve read:<\/p>\n

Stones from the River<\/strong>, by Ursula Hegi. I thought it was pretty good. I’d never read about a german dwarf before, and I still remember the word, “Zwerg” (German for dwarf). Points for originality, first of all. Not crap.<\/p>\n

Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail<\/strong>, by Malika Oufkir. Easy to read. Compelling story line (especially for nonfiction). Downright good book. Not crap.<\/p>\n

As I Lay Dying<\/strong> and The Sound and the Fury<\/strong>, both by Faulkner, of course. Hated them both. I generally hated any Faulkner I came across in college, so I don’t specifically remember what I hated about these two. I know I read them both. Still, would people call it crap?<\/p>\n

Night<\/strong>, by Elie Wiesel. Not crap. For one thing, it’s only, like, four pages long. I read bedtime stories to my one year-old that last longer. So that’s an automatic plus.<\/p>\n

Middlesex<\/strong>, by Jeffrey Eugenides. Excellent book. Playful and witty writing plus a fascinating story line. Super-non-crap.<\/p>\n

That’s it. I’m not even going to talk about all the books that were beloved and well-known before Oprah gave them a new audience. Just from the ones I’ve personally read, I think she’s ok.<\/p>\n

I see The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen, on her list. It’s also on my bookshelf, but I’ve been avoiding it because it’s long and I’ve got this feeling that it’s more clever than I want to bother with right now.<\/p>\n

But I can tell that it can tell that I’m avoiding it. And Oprah liked it, right? So maybe I’ll give it a shot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Would you trust this woman with your summer reading? I was talking to a friend today who mentioned that she was planning to give away some books. She has a lot of science fiction, some random books on Africa, and a few crappy Oprah books. “Crappy Oprah books?” I asked. Of course, she was talking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-famous-people","category-languagelit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}