Sometimes when my husband travels he reads USA Today and brings back articles that he thinks will interest me. This is very thoughtful on his part and it's usually something that I really AM interested in, not 10 steps to keeping the laundry room organized or how to get 25 hours out of a 24 hour day. This week he brought home a piece called Books that leave a Legacy..."25 titles that made an impact on readers and the publishing industry over the past quarter century." Some of the items on the list made me think....and made me think about what other books might qualify.
#2 The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard (1996)
I remember my boss's wife recommending this book to me because she heard about it on Oprah...and it was indeed Oprah's first book club selection. Love her or hate her (and I lean toward the former), Oprah has had an incredible effect on the publishing industry and the reading public. There are those who criticize Oprah for having the audacity to "decide" what we should be reading...but no one can deny that since Oprah's Book Club started, more people are reading and more people are talking about books. Now who could possibly find an issue with that?
#11 Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding (1998)
The dawn of chick lit...not a favorite of mine for its content or its suspect use of the possessive apostrophe in the title. My internal jury is still out on what this means for the world. Has chick lit given a voice to women that they haven't had before? Or has it belittled female authors and forced them to conform to a confining niche and have shoes and purses on their covers in order to secure space on the shelves of our bookstores? There is, however, one thing I am sure about...when Helen Fielding wrote the book, she didn't visualize Bridget as Renee Zellwegger "porked out" at 125 pounds!
#17 The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe (1987)
This was a book that I couldn't get through, but I know that it caught the attention of the reading public and may have been the original fictional depiction of what John Edwards has come to call the "Two Americas". Although Tom Wolfe clearly had the better marketing and name recognition, I would posit that T. C. Boyle did a better job with this subject in The Tortilla Curtain. Could Tom Hanks be any more embarrassed about a movie? Well, maybe Joe vs. the Volcano.
#23 Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier (1997)
For the 61 weeks that Cold Mountain occupied a slot on the New York Times Bestseller List (in hardcover), it seemed that you couldn't go anywhere without seeing someone toting that distinctive blue covered book. To me that was the beginning of the Book Club era. Publishers seemed to finally get that readers were hungry for more than bodice-rippers and Danielle Steele. I personally thought that Cold Mountain was a bit slow and plodding, but I appreciated the beauty of the language. Not sure Frazier had Zellwegger and Kidman in mind here and somehow the Inman of my imagination was not as attractive as Jude Law, so the movie left me wanting as most movie adaptations of books do.
If I could add to this list, I would include:
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt (1993) - how bizarre, a modern gothic murder story...non-fiction, no less...set in Savannah and peopled with a black transvestite, a variety of people of uncertain sexual orientation, the creme de la creme of Southern society and a slimy, unlikeable murder victim sits on the New York Times Bestseller List for OVER FOUR YEARS in hardcover (take that, Cold Mountain!) This book singlehandedly made non-fiction sexy, put Savannah back on the map as a tourist destination replete with tours based on locales in the book and scared the hell out of people who made a habit of waiting for books to come out in paperback!
I LOVE Kevin Spacey and think his looks capture the essence of Jim Williams. And John Cusack lives in my heart as Lloyd Dobler, boom box over his head blasting "In Your Eyes", resolute in the rain and unashamed of his unabashed adoration of Diane. But overall, the movie disappointed.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach (predates the 25 year time frame) and The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield - I'm sure I'm missing something, but to me these books exemplify the literary equivalent of psychobabble. A lot of people ran around expounding on how these books changed their lives, gave them new insights, etc...but in the end, no one really understood them and they didn't change anything. The movie version of this for me was The Gods Must Be Crazy.
The Green Mile by Stephen King - Stephen King has made a tremendously successful career by continuously surprising the reading public. Who could have predicted that he would momentarily resurrect the serialized novel, a genre made famous by Dickens (someone correct me here...because I'm sure I'm wrong), and leave my friend Lauren and me counting the days until the next episode was published? And in this case, the movie was quite good!
Marley and Me by John Grogan and Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand - I know these don't qualify, but they hold a special place in my heart because you gotta love a book with an animal protagonist!!!
So...this BEGS the question...what books have left a legacy with you (no 25 year time frame need apply)?
Di
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