Oprah hates books.

That's what I take away from an MSNBC story that says whenever Oprah picked a book for her book club it actually hurt overall book sales.

Mind you, that's overall book sales--not the lone book she baptized with some anointing oils.

According to MSNBC, Oprah had fancy tastes. But those tastes didn't coincide with her audience, who tended to gravitate toward beach reads.

This meant that whenever Oprah picked, oh, say, East of Eden, by John Steinbeck, as she did in 2003, her audience took a long while to read the book. A lot longer. So long that they stopped buying their usual shirt-ripping Harlequins, and actually hurt overall book sales as a result. Sure, Steinbeck saw an uptick in sales--but the lusty Lotharios of the romance trade that drive book sales saw a significant dip in sales. Blazing Bedtime Stories, Volume VI* makes people blaze through those pages, I guess.

Whatever the case, I can't get past the fact that this whole story seems like an insult to everyone's mom, mine included. What?? My mother likes Maeve Binchy! Don't make me feel guilty by association.




*Not for nothing, but the tag line for that book is "...and they lived sexily ever after!" BEST. TAG. LINE. EVER.