Unread Bestsellers (what bestseller can you not get through?)

The Word Spy ^ | Jan, 2003

[Utah Girl]

unread bestseller

(UN.red best.sel.ur) n. A book that many people purchase but few read in its entirety.

Example Citation:

There's the National Book Critics Circle Awards, another nice "high-culture" opportunity for Jonathan Franzen, author of jumbo unread bestseller The Corrections. —Alexandra Jacobs, "The Eight-Day Week," New York Observer, March 11, 2002

Backgrounder:
Here's my all-time Top 10 unread bestsellers list:

The Bible
A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco
The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom
Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak
Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
The Bell Curve, Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein
The End of History, Francis Fukuyama
Beowulf, Seamus Heaney (trans.)

Earliest Citation:

A 500-page novel set in a 14th-century monastery and written by an Italian professor of semiotics is hardly the stuff of conventional best sellers. But "The Name of the Rose," by Umberto Eco, has proven to be just that. ...

A few cynical observers suspect that snob appeal has played a considerable role in the book's rise. Says Howard Kaminsky, president of Warner Books, which bought the paperback rights for $550,000: "Every year there is one great unread best seller. A lot of people who will buy the book will never read it." It serves, he has said, as a "passport" to intellectual respectability. "It doesn't hurt to be seen carrying a copy at the Museum of Modern Art. It hints you've got something more in your mind than getting picked up."
~~~—Alexandre Still, "Miracle of the Rose," Newsweek, September 26, 1983

[Old Professer]

Anyone ever heard of old Gustav?

I've been doing these dumb things for three weeks now, and some of them are really weird.

[Utah Girl]

Great list! I love Catch-22, it is on my top ten list. :)

[Porterville]

Fountain Head
Steppenne Wolf
Play Boy December 2002

[Utah Girl]

I really enjoyed The Fountainhead also. Couldn't get into Steppenwolfe, or any of Herman Hesse's books.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

I've been doing these dumb things for three weeks now, and some of them are really weird.


1.) Doesn't count if you use a writing implement.
2.) They cycle every ten years or so.
3.) The Gates Brown/Charlie Lau series is due. (George Will must be excited.)

[Taliesan]

A fifty year old man sluffing along isn't nearly as impressive a 19 year old running like a gazelle, but I'll take it easy and pretend people aren't laughing at me.

Do it. I'm 46 and started back in August after years of slugdom. You'll feel great after 6 months or so of agony.

[Old Professer]

Doesn't count if you use a writing implement.

Damn, you're tough, BTW. WTH is Finley Peter Dunne?

[Kevin Curry]

It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves.

Beautiful. I must find my copy of Dubliners and read it again for the wonderful pleasure of it.

[justshutupandtakeit]

What makes it unique is the combination of high manners and hilarity. I loved it instantly. Had to read it for Humanities at UofC. That and Bleak House another great one but deadly serious and funny. It about time I read another Dickens I still have a few to go. When I am finally done with my principal project I will do it.

Actually, I prefer ladies of today her era was a bit to restrictive for me.

[Roscoe]

'Slaughterhouse Five' - Kurt Vonnegut

Did you ever read 'Inferno' by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle?

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Better yet, who are Gates Brown and Charlie Lau? (I know, but curious who else does. Hint: The DH rule caused GB to balloon.)

[Old Professer]

PNSVYZKD NT G.H. JQDZJQHH?

[CobaltBlue]

Hi Utah Girl - I loved "Name of the Rose" but have had tough slogging through Eco's latest, "Baudolino."

Loved "Instance of the Fingerpost." Thought the ending was really cool.

Have yet to finish "Moby Dick." Cannot even bring myself to pick up anything by Tom Clancy anymore. Finally had my fill of Patricia Cornwell, could not finish "Southern Cross" or "Isle of Dogs," and won't buy anything of hers again.

I really like the Lattimore versions of the Gospels and Acts and Letters translated directly from the Greek, and recommend them highly.

[CobaltBlue]

I agree that "Vineland" wasn't very good. I loved "V" and "Gravity's Rainbow," thought "The Crying of Lot 49" was so-so, and was looking forward to "Vineland" but was disappointed. But "Mason and Dixon" was so bad I couldn't even finish it.

[CobaltBlue]

>>Finnegans Wake and Moby Dick.<<

I never really aspired to read Finnegan's Wake, because I figured it was over my head -- I mean, Anthony Burgess is a genius, and I am not, and I couldn't even read his Shorter Finnegans Wake.

But I do aspire to read Moby Dick. Someday.

[CobaltBlue]

>>"Confederacy of Dunces"<<

It was the most accurate depiction of the real New Orleans ever written. A very weird place, indeed. Almost nobody gets it right, either.

[Chancellor Palpatine]

Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Ecco - has a great synopsis on the back, but is nearly incomprehensible.

[Utah Girl]

I think it is a rule that the more books an author has, the worse each one gets. Tom Clancy is following that rule, as is Patricia Cornwell. Herman Wouk: I loved his early works, cannot stand his later stuff. And Leon Uris is a huge disappointment. I loved Exodus, Mila 18, Armageddon, down to about the Haj. His last book (I didn't remember the title on purpose) was putrid. I won't ever read another new Uris book ever again.

[stands2reason]

I'm a verbivore myself. :-) Do you ever get those e-mails about those so-called origins of certain words...all of them completely ridiculous and refutable by a glance at a dictionary?

[habs4ever]

Ayn Rand deserves special contempt.She can't write, and I think her prose is as numbing as a Nuremberg rally ;-)Milton's Paradise Lost is a chore, and if you ever want to get a whiff of high brow pretensious writing that makes critics swoon, pick up Elizabeth Bowen's The Heat of the Day....grrrrrrr.