Category Archives: Authors

Oprah Winfrey on Wednesday picked Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” as her next book club selection, a nod bound to launch a sales boom for the American writer’s dark tale of a post-apocalyptic father-son journey.

Winfrey called the book “haunting and inspiring” with a lasting affect on the reader. “It is a quick read and a journey well worth taking,” she added.

In the past, Oprah’s book club picks have pulled obscure books onto the best-seller lists, bringing publicity to previously unknown authors. In this case, though, McCarthy is already a fairly widely-read and award-winning author (other works include All the Pretty Horses and Blood Meridian).

Oprah’s previous selections have ranged from Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” to Elie Wiesel’s “Night.” Her most recent selection before Wednesday’s was actor Sidney Poitier’s “The Measure of a Man.”

Not all of her picks have been on target. Her selection of James Frey’s “A Million Little Pieces” got caught in a controversy after the author admitted making up key parts of his best-selling drug and alcohol memoir.

Link to the Yahoo News article

Previously:
Oprah chooses Sidney Poitier memoir
Oprah to announce new book club title

The Guardian has an interesting article about authors who have writer characters in their books.

Most authors seem to be drawn at some point to create a character who is an author, either as a jokey wave to their readers or a therapeutic exploration of another kind of writer they might have been. And, while such potentially self-indulgent conceits might be considered the kind of trick favoured by the type of writer who wins prizes rather than sells copies, two of the most populist writers in English-language fiction have been among the keenest players of these postmodernist games.

The interest of novelists in inventing novelists has both a practical and a psychological explanation. Realistic fiction demands that the details of a character’s job should be as convincing as possible, and the creation of a creative writer uses research already accrued, without the long Googling and interviewing necessary to portray a convincing undertaker or dentist.

But there is also a deeper mental explanation. Most writers have had a literary equivalent of the actors’ experience of self-division: the sense that their writing comes from someone or something separate.

Read the rest of the article here.