What's Your History with Oprah's Book Club?
Or how I maybe kind of owe my career to an afternoon talkshow
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about Oprah. While researching a recent piece about the early-’90s hit The Bridges of Madison County, I was surprised to learn that it pre-dated Oprah’s Book Club by three years. I was 11 when Oprah helped make Bridges a viral hit (to the tune of 60 million copies sold!), and I’ve never forgotten how grown-up I felt sneak-reading my mom’s copy one summer afternoon. That feeling was still potent a few years later when the Book Club launched in September 1996 with Jacquelyn Mitchard’s The Deep End of the Ocean.
When I started reading Oprah’s Book Club books, I was hoping for a very specific outcome: someone at school would recognize a cover, strike up a conversation, and become my nerdy new best friend. While that moment never materialized, I got something even more valuable.
At the time, I was in eighth grade. YA publishing was not nearly as robust as it is today, and we had never heard the term “helicopter parents.”
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