COMMENTARY | This Wednesday marks the end of Oprah Winfrey's 25-year-long streak as America's number one day time television talk show host. The authenticity of her interviews, whether serious or light-hearted, will leave the day time talk show circuit wanting. "The Oprah Winfrey Show" will surely be missed by many, and even more by those who, every year, looked forward to her famous Oprah Book Club selections.
I was first introduced to the "club" when I was 16, a junior in high school, who needed to find a way to pass some time in a math class in which I was the teacher's aide. "She Comes Undone," by Wally Lamb, immediately grabbed my attention at the school library. I saw that it had Oprah's blessing and figured I should give it a try.
The story circled around the character of Dolores Price and followed her life from her toddler years all the way till she was 40. I found it funny and at times haunting, especially when real life lessons were brought to life with Lamb's words through the eyes of Dolores.
At times, I was so deeply entrenched in the book that when the bell would ring to signal for us to go to our next period, I wouldn't hear it. It was the kind of book that you tell yourself you will only read one chapter before you go to bed, and then the next thing you knew it was well past midnight and you still didn't want to put it down. Yes, it was that good.
Over the years, I have read other books from Oprah's Book Club, such as "White Oleander" by Janet Fitch and "The Deep End of the Ocean" by Jacquelyn Mitchard. Both deal in some aspect with the dysfunctions of having a mother and being a mother, something both my sister and I could identify with.
In "White Oleander," I poured over the story of Janet Astrid and her search for her place in this world, from foster home to foster home, and the hold her mother had over her despite the fact that she was imprisoned.
"The Deep End of the Ocean" centered on Beth, a mother whose child goes missing and the ensuing grief and depression that followed, only to have him miraculously show up at her front door one day, nine years later, to ask if he can mow their lawn.
Though Mitchard could have put a period and ended it at that, she continues on to cover what goes on in a family after something like this has happened, and how, though it is a blessing, it is not necessarily a happy ending. For me, I could feel the desperation through Mitchard's words: the desperation of a family falling apart and trying to pull itself back together despite all of it.
I cannot possibly say if I would have ever read these books had they not had Oprah's seal of approval. Not because I am extremely selective of what I read, but because Oprah's spotlight allowed them to be noticed when perhaps they might not have been. The stories in these books have caused me to reflect on my own life and relationships. They have allowed me to read thoughts and emotions described in ways that, at times, I thought were indescribable.
"The Oprah Winfrey Show" will be missed indeed. Thankfully, we shall not have to fret too much because we still have OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network on cable TV. However, the fate of the Oprah Book Club is still unknown; there has been no further mention of if it will make it to OWN or not. Hopefully it will make a crossover, but if not, then I and millions of readers will forever be grateful for the Oprah Book Club and the 65 books we might not have read because of it.
For a complete list of the Oprah Book Club selections, please see:
http://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/Complete-List-of-Oprahs-Book-Club-Books
Source:
Carolyn Kellogg, "Oprah's Book Club: She spoke, we read" Los Angeles Times
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