Oprah returns to living writers for book club

Oprah Winfrey. Picture / Herald file

NEW YORK - Writers can rejoice -- Oprah has returned to picking living authors for her book club.

Credited by US publishers with being one of the biggest sales drivers in the business, Oprah Winfrey's book club began as a segment on her television talk show in 1996 and she initially picked new novels.

But she suspended the club in April 2002, before relaunching in June 2003 with classics such as John Steinbeck's "East of Eden" and Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina."

Earlier this year, a group of novelists wrote Winfrey a letter begging her to resume picking living authors, and finally she has relented.

Her latest pick announced on Thursday on her website was "A Million Little Pieces," a memoir by James Frey about the author's time at a rehabilitation center for alcohol and drug addiction, published by Random House imprint Anchor Books.

"It's a radical departure," Winfrey said on her show. "It's not a classic and it is also not fiction but a bold choice ... it's a gut-wrenching memoir."

Among the reasons the chat show host gave for her change of heart was that she could chat to living authors and interview them on her popular daytime show.

The book was already the No. 1 best seller on online book retailer Amazon.com on Friday.

An Oprah's Book Club logo on a book's cover has helped many of her picks garner sales of more than 1 million copies -- a huge amount given that in 2004 only eight fiction and eight non-fiction books sold more than 1 million copies in the United States, according to Publishers Weekly.

The club became controversial in 2001 when Jonathan Franzen publicly objected to the selection of his novel, "The Corrections," and said he feared it might affect his reputation in literary circles. He later said he regretted voicing his reservations.

Winfrey told The New York Times she had returned to living authors because she enjoyed interviewing writers. "It's kind of hard to do that when they're dead," she was quoted as saying.

- REUTERS