Sometimes in moments of deep contemplation while questioning my faith and my choices, I ask myself: “Is Oprah Winfrey the Devil?” Probably not, but she does have a cult following who will read anything she says to read and will buy her favorite things because if Oprah loves them everyone else should too.
Although I stopped watching Oprah years ago, I must admit that a piece of advice that I heard on her show has radically impacted how I define and carry myself. Probably in 1999 or 2000, when she allowed real people to actually talk on her show and not just celebrity doctors, psychiatrists and chefs, a young woman told Oprah that she wanted to be an actress. In her typical browbeating way, Oprah said: “You don’t want to be an actress. You want to be a star. If you want to act, go act.”
Although her advice did not inspire me to join a local theater company, at that moment, I stopped obsessing over where I have been published and where I wanted to publish. I am writer because I write. Nothing more and nothing less.
Truthfully, the concept could not be simpler. Do what you love and don’t worry about the economic or potential career impacts. If you want to be a photographer take pictures; want to be a runner then run; if you want to be singer then sing. Fulfillment comes from the action not the paycheck. (Every adult soon learns career happiness is a childhood myth).
However, there are limits to this counsel, if you want to be surgeon, don’t go cutting on your dog.
Showing posts with label Oprah. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Oprah. Show all posts
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Thursday, December 9, 2010
I Need This Book Please, Oprah Told Me To Read It
“Can you show me where the Oprah books are?” asked an elderly woman, holding her cane and flanked by her health care provider.
This is one of the most frequently asks questions in libraries across the country. Although many people think that Oprah should be her own library category like Fiction, Non-Fiction, Children’s, and Paperback Fiction, the books she has selected since her club’s inception on September 17, 1996 vary widely in authors, genre, style, and literary merit. Due to the diversity of her picks, these books are spread all over the library, typically.
However, I realized that I was working at our library district’s gorgeous “retail-style” library, meaning a library with so many displays that it feels like you are shopping at a bookstore for free. At this particular library, we put the Oprah Selections on our special display for Award Winners. (I feel a little reservation about this because when I think of award winners, The National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, the Mann Booker Award, and the Nobel Prize for Literature come to mind. But, is there really any greater boost to an author’s career than being selected by Oprah? So in many ways, her book selections are award winners.)
Having given Oprah selections to patrons at libraries in two different states, I have many of them memorized, so I buzzed around the library grabbing as many as could. From our special display, I snatched Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, Tara Road by Maeve Binchy,White Oleander by Janet Fitch, The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve. I then went over to biography to grab Night by Elie Wiesel and found A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle in non-fiction. I later made my way to the Classics for East of Eden by John Steinbeck, and Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. I concluded my quest with a few of my favorites from Oprah’s list Sula by Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison and Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende.
I placed this enormous array of books on a table for the woman to peruse. Admitting she was not a huge reader, the senior citizen said she felt like “an Oprah Book was a good place to start," which is such a funny phrase because I tend to think of Anna Karenina as a Tolstoy novel not an Oprah Book. She grabbed Wiesel’s Night and also picked up McCarthy’s The Road when I told her that one was also a movie. She left happy and is just one more example of why Oprah is the Ultimate Sherpa of Library World.
In many ways Oprah is the perfect Old School Librarian, the kind who starts their readers off gently with engaging books and slowly moves them to move literary fiction and Classics. When she started her Book Club, her selections were mostly contemporary books that could trigger some conservation but for the most part were not literary fiction. Early examples of her simple selections include The Heart of a Woman by Maya Angelou and The Treasure Hunt by Bill Cosby. As Oprah’s Book Club grew into an international sensation with millions of readers and the selected books instantly becoming best sellers, Oprah started to select more literary works such as novels by her friend and Nobel Prize Winning Author Toni Morrison. She later transitioned her readers to Classic novel. Average readers who probably read New York Times Best Sellers and paperback romances were reading, The Good Earth and Anna Karenina all because Oprah asked. And, she has done it again by, in her words “going old school” with her winter selections Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.
In the past year, I have put out Great Expectations (my favorite book ever) as a “Staff Pick” with my name scribbled on a recommendation slip sticking out of the book nine times in the past year. It has been returned to shelf nine times without being checked out. Within hours of Oprah’s selection, we had numerous requests for the book. Librarians go to school for years to learn that trick and never have near as much success.
But fortunately, Oprah does the work for librarians. She tells the masses what to read; they us what they were told to read; and, we put the books in their hands resulting in both higher circulation numbers and happy customers. In the early days of her club, librarians shuttered every time Oprah made a new selection. Oprah is both the biggest boon and bane for libraries. Anytime, she announces a new book selection, libraries are slammed with a multitude of requests. Her requests impact libraries everywhere, Interlibrary Loan is not a reliable option to fill requests. So, libraries are expected to purchase books. But, what does a library do with 70 copies of The Book of Ruth after Oprah moved on to her next book? This is where book rentals for libraries come in. Most major book vendors allow libraries to rent “in-demand” books and return them when the books fall out of favor. This movement in libraries is a clear-cut example of the Oprah Effect.
Without any real knowledge of library operations, Oprah has changed the way libraries buy books; accomplished what most librarians have always hoped to accomplish -- getting readers to abandon bibliographic crap in favor of more esoteric, educational titles; and, has caused circulation numbers to increase.
Next to the Librarian of Congress, Oprah is probably the most powerful figure in libraries.
This is one of the most frequently asks questions in libraries across the country. Although many people think that Oprah should be her own library category like Fiction, Non-Fiction, Children’s, and Paperback Fiction, the books she has selected since her club’s inception on September 17, 1996 vary widely in authors, genre, style, and literary merit. Due to the diversity of her picks, these books are spread all over the library, typically.
However, I realized that I was working at our library district’s gorgeous “retail-style” library, meaning a library with so many displays that it feels like you are shopping at a bookstore for free. At this particular library, we put the Oprah Selections on our special display for Award Winners. (I feel a little reservation about this because when I think of award winners, The National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, the Mann Booker Award, and the Nobel Prize for Literature come to mind. But, is there really any greater boost to an author’s career than being selected by Oprah? So in many ways, her book selections are award winners.)
Having given Oprah selections to patrons at libraries in two different states, I have many of them memorized, so I buzzed around the library grabbing as many as could. From our special display, I snatched Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, Tara Road by Maeve Binchy,White Oleander by Janet Fitch, The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve. I then went over to biography to grab Night by Elie Wiesel and found A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle in non-fiction. I later made my way to the Classics for East of Eden by John Steinbeck, and Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. I concluded my quest with a few of my favorites from Oprah’s list Sula by Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison and Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende.
I placed this enormous array of books on a table for the woman to peruse. Admitting she was not a huge reader, the senior citizen said she felt like “an Oprah Book was a good place to start," which is such a funny phrase because I tend to think of Anna Karenina as a Tolstoy novel not an Oprah Book. She grabbed Wiesel’s Night and also picked up McCarthy’s The Road when I told her that one was also a movie. She left happy and is just one more example of why Oprah is the Ultimate Sherpa of Library World.
In many ways Oprah is the perfect Old School Librarian, the kind who starts their readers off gently with engaging books and slowly moves them to move literary fiction and Classics. When she started her Book Club, her selections were mostly contemporary books that could trigger some conservation but for the most part were not literary fiction. Early examples of her simple selections include The Heart of a Woman by Maya Angelou and The Treasure Hunt by Bill Cosby. As Oprah’s Book Club grew into an international sensation with millions of readers and the selected books instantly becoming best sellers, Oprah started to select more literary works such as novels by her friend and Nobel Prize Winning Author Toni Morrison. She later transitioned her readers to Classic novel. Average readers who probably read New York Times Best Sellers and paperback romances were reading, The Good Earth and Anna Karenina all because Oprah asked. And, she has done it again by, in her words “going old school” with her winter selections Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.
In the past year, I have put out Great Expectations (my favorite book ever) as a “Staff Pick” with my name scribbled on a recommendation slip sticking out of the book nine times in the past year. It has been returned to shelf nine times without being checked out. Within hours of Oprah’s selection, we had numerous requests for the book. Librarians go to school for years to learn that trick and never have near as much success.
But fortunately, Oprah does the work for librarians. She tells the masses what to read; they us what they were told to read; and, we put the books in their hands resulting in both higher circulation numbers and happy customers. In the early days of her club, librarians shuttered every time Oprah made a new selection. Oprah is both the biggest boon and bane for libraries. Anytime, she announces a new book selection, libraries are slammed with a multitude of requests. Her requests impact libraries everywhere, Interlibrary Loan is not a reliable option to fill requests. So, libraries are expected to purchase books. But, what does a library do with 70 copies of The Book of Ruth after Oprah moved on to her next book? This is where book rentals for libraries come in. Most major book vendors allow libraries to rent “in-demand” books and return them when the books fall out of favor. This movement in libraries is a clear-cut example of the Oprah Effect.
Without any real knowledge of library operations, Oprah has changed the way libraries buy books; accomplished what most librarians have always hoped to accomplish -- getting readers to abandon bibliographic crap in favor of more esoteric, educational titles; and, has caused circulation numbers to increase.
Next to the Librarian of Congress, Oprah is probably the most powerful figure in libraries.
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