Obama's book club?

Today when you have time to rest and digest the Thanksgiving dinner, we've got a recommendation about an interesting article from the NYT about the person who might replace Oprah Winfrey when it comes to recommending on books and influencing the book market - President-elect Barack Obama.

The article ("For Books, Is Obama New Oprah?"), written by Motoko Rich about two weeks ago is discussing the effect of a mention Mr. Obama made on CBS in his first interview since winning the election, about having read “a new book out about F .D. R.’s first 100 days” without specifically naming a title or author.

Besides the riddle about the specific book he reffered to, there were other consquences: "Hill & Wang, an imprint of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, which originally printed fewer than 5,000 copies of “F D R: The First Hundred Days” in June and received scant review coverage in the United States, decided to reprint 5,000 copies on Monday morning, partly in response to orders from booksellers. In an e-mail message, Bob Wietrak, a vice president of merchandising for Barnes & Noble Booksellers, said the company had noticed an uptick in orders on BN.com following the interview and was trying to get more copies in stock."

Will we see more recommendations on books from President Obama? I'm quite sure we will (how about Obama's book club? that can be a change in the White House). And wouldn't it be great if one of them would be a green-themed book? Let's wait and see..

More posts on Oprah Winfrey's book club:

A special green offer for readers of Oprah's Book Club new selection

Happy Holidays,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Plant a tree for every book you read!

Oprah's book club selection - Love in the Time of Cholera

I was very happy to read two days ago in the New York Times that Oprah Winfrey has picked “Love in the Time of Cholera,” the epic love story by Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, as her next book club selection.

Garcia Marquez is one of my favorite writers and I one of the greatest storytellers ever. I hope that this selection by the most influential book club in the U.S. will expose more people to his great work.

I don't know if it's a coincidence or not, but a film adaptation of “Love in the Time of Cholera” is scheduled for November release. In any case, I join Oprah Winfrey who said in the article “If you’re like me, you’ll want to read the book before you see the movie.” Winfrey also suggested book clubs could hold their next meeting at the movie theater.

MSNBC.com reported that Vintage Books, a paperback imprint of Random House Inc., announced a new printing of 750,000 copies for the novel, and an additional 30,000 for the original Spanish-language text.

I know that Random House, which is a leading U.S. publisher, announced in 2006 that it will raise the proportion of recycled paper it uses to at least 30% by 2010 from under 3% at the time of the announcement. Still, I am quite sure that a lot of virgin paper will be used for all these new copies.

Therefore, those of you who will buy new copies of the book (libraries or a used copy are also great options to get a hold of the book) are welcome to balance them out by planting trees with Eco-Libris. "Love in the Time of Cholera" is really a great book and can be a great opportunity to start taking action and making our reading habit more sustainable. I'm sure Oprah wouldn't mind that :-)

Yours,

Raz

Eco-Libris: plant a tree for every book you read!