Continuing a bizarre trend:
Oprah Winfrey has chosen Eckhart Tolle's "A New Earth," a self-help guide by the author of the million-selling "The Power of Now," as her latest book club selection.
Of course we can't fault the choice but we can question the continued exclusion of women in Oprah's book club.
The stats to date:
Since Jan 2005, she's picked 11 books.
All of them have been by men. Every one.
If you go back, since 2003 she's picked 17 titles. 15 of them are by men.
I'm not suggesting affirmative action here. I never am. I just continue to find it curious.
FYI: 49 million viewers watch the show every week and the majority are overwhelmingly female. More than 80% say some searches.
Her timing of picking books by men coincides exactly with Jonathan Franzen's criticism of her previous book club picks--which were mostly by women or featured female characters. Apparently, Franzen effectively, if unintentionally, bullied her into picking books that are part of the Old Boy's Club of literature. Oprah's thin-skinned and Franzen's snobbery toward her deeply affected her--and sadly, still affects her today.
Posted by: a reader | January 30, 2008 at 01:25 PM
Oprah supposedly chooses the books that she feels are the best for her book club. Does gender of the author really matter?
By the way, I am equally a fan of MJ Rose's books and John McCain's books.
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W.W. Ni
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Posted by: W.W. Ni | January 30, 2008 at 02:46 PM
No, the gender doesn't matter - I say that in the post but its statistically impossible given the number of books written by men and by women that she 11 for 11 or 15 for 17.
Posted by: M.J | January 30, 2008 at 08:15 PM
Yeah, what we're seeing here is an initial prejudice which assumes that books by men will be better than books by women. If it were only Oprah, it would be bad enough (you'd think at least Oprah, after all...) but when you look at the number of reviews given to male versus female in the NY Times and other important book review pages/sections, the bias is incredible. This then carries over into the treatment given to chicklit, which is taken less seriously than any more masculine genre (thrillers, mysteries, etc.) without regard to the often ambitious nature of the writing. And reviewed far, far, less in general interest publications.
Posted by: sandra newman | February 03, 2008 at 06:25 PM
Maybe Oprah is making up for her earlier preference for women authors. If you go back to when she first began her book club in 1996, she has featured 37 female authors and 28 male authors.
Posted by: Mary | February 04, 2008 at 01:32 AM