a completely unfounded opinion

I hate it.

There. I’ve said it. I know it’s wrong for me to say that, I know that I’m going against a bit of girl power to announce that I think her book list is a bit of crap.

pamie waits for a second to see if she is suddenly struck by lightning…

For some reason, I keep reading books from her list. At first, I knew that they were books on her list, but I was planning on reading them anyway, before I ever knew that they were on her list, so I was still keeping some sort of individuality… but once they became on The List, everywhere I looked someone was reading the same thing I was.

When you order books from Amazon.com, they make a book recommendation list for you so that if you want a new book, they go off the stuff you’ve previously ordered from them and they try and find similar books for you. Somehow they think that I love Oprah’s Book Club totally and completely, and now whenever they recommend a book, it’s basically sent from Oprah’s bookshelf to my mailbox.

This whole fiasco started with She’s Come Undone, by Wally Lamb, which if you haven’t read you need to do so… and then suddenly Oprah was telling everyone to read it. By the time I had moved onto I Know This Much Is True, people were asking me, “Is that the book Oprah is telling everyone to read?” And I’m like, “That’s not why I’m reading it.” And they’re like, “Sure it isn’t.”

Now the first thing I noticed was that IKTMIT wasn’t as good as SCU, but I figured that was just the author sliding a little on his quality. But now I’m tired of it. I just finished What Looks Like Crazy On an Ordinary Day… which I had ordered because it was recommended to me by Amazon.com, but when it arrived it had this crazy “Oprah Club” circle on the front of the cover. Not a sticker, mind you, that I could peel off, but they manipulated the cover art to put this sticker on! I couldn’t believe it. So I read the book in the privacy of my own home, so I don’t look like an uneducated mindless a-gram-is-better-than-a-damn “grrrl” who just reads what Oprah tells me. I’ll tell you what, this book isn’t even that good. And small. The book is so tiny. It’s like books that are long are bad, these days, and everyone is trying to be so concise… only what is needed in the film version.

I realize this has nothing to do with Oprah, but I just wanted to say that.

I also realize that none of these points have anything to do with Oprah, or her book club. If I chose to read all three of these books on my own, and they just happened to be a part of the club, then what’s the problem? If Oprah is recommending bad books, aren’t I just choosing those same books on my own, thereby assuring that Oprah and I have similar tastes in literature? Am I mad because everyone is reading what I’m reading? How snobby and stupid is that? Geez, I’d better put that Stephen King book down, God knows how many millions of people may be reading it…

I JUST DON’T WANT TO LIKE OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB, OKAY?

I haven’t found anything really wrong with it… I just can’t believe that people will read because Oprah tells them to. Here! Read one of these! It won’t work, you won’t read them, because I don’t have a talk show and a “program.”

Oh, you know it’s going to be a good week when I start on Monday being jealous of Oprah. What new kind of lowness have I dropped to? How on Earth can I remedy that situation. Oprah is better than me. She knows it, I know it, Steadman knows it…

Read whatever you want.

Oh… this has no value and has only succeeded in making me look particularly catty at the start of a new week.

DAMN YOU, OPRAH! YOU’VE DONE IT AGAIN! I’ll get you next time.