![]() It has launched new writers like Edwidge Danticat and given them a mind-bogglingly huge audience. Her on-air book club has catapulted respected authors like Toni Morrison and Kaye Gibbons into blockbuster bestsellerdom. For three years now, she has been using her fame, her reach and her ratings to promote the noble habit of regular, thoughtful reading. Given how far we still have to come in terms of collective literacy, you'd think that Oprah Winfrey's status as a champion of the written word would be assured, that her recognition at the National Book Awards this year would be a cause for cheering. And the guy next to you on the subway or in the carpool lane probably hasn't picked up a novel since he snoozed his way through "The Scarlet Letter" in 12th grade. Approximately 40 million American adults can barely read or write. ![]() Despite the proliferation of superstores and the reading groups that have sprung up like Starbucks in the last few years, we are still not an especially book-loving nation. We're the lucky ones, and we're a distinct minority. Whether that moment came by way of Tom Sawyer or Jo March or Nancy Drew, we became alive to the power of words and imagination, and nothing would ever be the same again. It's been such a long time for some of us that it's easy to forget how it felt when reading initially enthralled us, when it clicked in our minds that books were a portal to realms that stretched far beyond the reach of parents and school and the old neighborhood. I may not get my reading list from it, but I've nevertheless learned something from its success - what an astonishing difference one person can make, and what elitist twits people who pride themselves on their erudition can be. Quite the contrary.Īlthough I've never shopped for novels that bear the Oprah imprimatur, I don't particularly care if my local book shop is out of "Mother of Pearl," and I couldn't pick Bernhard Schlink out of a lineup, I think Ms. ![]() But I'm not so arrogant as to believe that something that's of no particular use to me is of no particular use, period. I'm a literate, library- card- carrying adult who has spent a lifetime developing a sharp sense of personal preference. I don't need Oprah Winfrey to tell me what to read.
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