Unread bestseller
Posted by TheFallen on February 11, 2003
In Reply to: Unread bestseller posted by Bob on February 11, 2003
: : From Word Spy (2/11/03:
: : unread bestseller 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:
: : 1. The Bible
: : 2. A Brief
History of Time, Stephen Hawking
: : 3. The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
:
: 4. The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco
: : 5. The Closing of the American Mind,
Allan Bloom
: : 6. Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak
: : 7. Gravity's Rainbow,
Thomas Pynchon
: : 8. The Bell Curve, Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein
:
: 9. The End of History, Francis Fukuyama
: : 10. 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
: : For more Word Spy words, see the Word
Spy Archives:
: : www.wordspy.com
: I slogged all the way through Rose, but Greavity's Rainbow? I'd make that Number One.
I absolutely adore this term. Thanks :)
- Unread bestseller ESC 02/11/03
- unread bestseller masakim 02/11/03
- A classic
ESC 02/12/03
- Classic/groaner S. Ryan 02/12/03
- A classic
ESC 02/12/03
- unread bestseller masakim 02/11/03