University of Arkansas Press Issues New Edition of Its History of Oprah’s Book Club

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Adored by its fans, deplored by its critics, Oprah’s Book Club has been at the center of arguments about cultural authority and literary taste since it began in 1996. Reading with Oprah: The Book Club that Changed America, by Kathleen Rooney, was originally published by the University of Arkansas Press in 2005. The book explores the club's revolutionary fusion of books, television and commerce and tells the engaging and in-depth story of the OBC phenomenon. A new, updated paperback edition of the book has just been published to cover the many events related to the book club that have taken place in the past three years.

Kathleen Rooney combined extensive research with a dynamic voice to reveal the club’s far-reaching cultural impact and its role as crucible for the clash between “high” and “low” literary taste. Through close examination of Winfrey’s picks and personal interviews with book club authors and readers, Rooney demonstrated how the club that Barbara Kingsolver calls “one of the best possible uses of a television set” has, according to Wally Lamb, “gotten people of all ages to read, to read more, and to read widely.”

    The original edition of the book covered the club from its inception in 1996, through the Jonathan Franzen contretemps, the surprising suspension in 2002, and, after the club’s return in 2003, the progression from “great books” to memoir. All new material includes an extensive look at the scandal surrounding Oprah’s pick of James Frey’s memoir, A Million Little Pieces, and Oprah's turn to contemporary fiction, including Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (and his first-ever television interview), Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera, as well as the flowering of literary discussion online, which has been actively promoted on the book club section of Oprah’s Web site.

     Kathleen Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press and the author of the upcoming University of Arkansas Press title Live Nude Girl. She has co-written the collaborative poetry collections Something Really Wonderful and That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness with Elisa Gabbert. She lives in Chicago.