In 1996, The Oprah Winfrey Show introduced Oprah’s Book Club – and the publishing world has never been the same.
Since Oprah selected her first work, The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard, books – fiction, non-fiction, troubled memoirs – have skyrocketed to popularity. And the episodes in which Oprah discussed the book, typically with the author present, are some of the most popular interviews the talk show host has conducted. In fact, author Cormac McCarthy (The Road) made an extremely rare – perhaps his first ever - television appearance to discuss his book.
But the seemingly innocuous feature is not without controversy. In 2005, Oprah selected the alleged memoir of James Frey, A Million Little Pieces, which became wildly popular. As it turned out, the non-fiction tome about a young man struggling with drug addiction and violence turned out to be anything but non-fiction.
Embarrassed, Winfrey had the author on the show after it was discovered his memoir was filled with a million little lies. She pretty much flogged him for the deceit, and Frey has yet to truly recover from the event.
It took a long time before Oprah recovered – and some feared the book club was defunct. But then, in 2006, she selected Elie Weisel’s Night, the author’s harrowing and true tale of surviving the Nazi concentration camps. It was the only selection for that year.
If you haven’t read all of these, there’s no better time than the present to start checking them off your to do list. Over time, I’ll share some of my favorites with you.
Each entry leads to a more detailed entry for that year and information on how you can purchase a copy of any of the works.
2009
- Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan
2008
- The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
- A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle
2007
- The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
- Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
- Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
- The Road by Cormac McCarthy
- The Measure of a Man by Sidney Poitier
2006
- Night by Elie Wiesel
2005
- A Million Little Pieces by James Frey
- Light in August by William Faulkner
- The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
- As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
2004
- The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
- The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
2003
- Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton
- East of Eden by John Steinbeck
2002
- Sula by Toni Morrison
- Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald
2001
- A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
- The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
- Cane River by Lalita Tademy
- Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail by Malika Oufkir
- Icy Sparks by Gwyn Hyman Rubio
- We Were The Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates
2000
- House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III
- Drowning Ruth by Christina Schwarz
- Open House by Elizabeth Berg
- The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
- While I Was Gone by Sue Miller
- The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
- Back Roads by Tawni O'Dell
- Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
- Gap Creek by Robert Morgan
1999
- A Map of the World by Jane Hamilton
- Vinegar Hill by A. Manette Ansay
- River, Cross My Heart by Breena Clarke
- Tara Road by Maeve Binchy
- Mother of Pearl by Melinda Haynes
- White Oleander by Janet Fitch
- The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve
- The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
- Jewel by Bret Lott
1998
- Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts
- Midwives by Chris Bohjalian
- What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day by Pearl Cleage
- I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb
- Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat
- Black and Blue by Anna Quindlen
- Here on Earth by Alice Hoffman
- Paradise by Toni Morrison
1997
- The Best Way To Play by Bill Cosby
- The Treasure Hunt by Bill Cosby
- The Meanest Thing To Say by Bill Cosby
- A Virtuous Woman by Kaye Gibbons
- Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons
- A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines
- Songs In Ordinary Time by Mary McGarry Morris
- The Heart of a Woman by Maya Angelou
- The Rapture of Canaan by Sheri Reynolds
- Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi
- She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb
1996
- The Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton
- Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
- The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard
