You know, Oprah’s bookclub is a behemoth. If bookstores were the NYSE, her recommendations would affect buying like institutional investors do when they buy up stock- that’s a bad analogy- but what I mean is that there’s a limit that the institutions can buy because they could make or break companies even if they’re just buying a small percentage. Okay, my analogy is getting worse, but the point is, Oprah recommended that weirdo’s book a while back. The one that the weirdo (FTBSITTTD!) said was all true. Oprah recommending a book = massive sales. Massive. So it turns out that all may no be what is seems. The Smoking Gun has a pretty interesting article about the situation here. Normally I just check TSG for funny mugshots, but when they do real articles, they do them well.
So what’s my point? I’m not sure. I just think Oprah’s Book Club is a weird beast that plods through people’s lives. But hey, at least she’s getting people to read. If I were an author and her group picked my book. . I’d be ecstatic- but admittedly for financial reasons primarily and the security of knowing that my publisher would probably be willing to pick up my next book (or two). But I’d have to be careful. I wouldn’t want to pull a Franzen (more).It was after the Oprah show aired that TSG first took a look at Frey. We had simply planned to track down one of his many mug shots and add it to our site’s large collection. While Frey offers no specific details about when and where he was collared, the book does mention three states where he ran into trouble: Ohio, Michigan, and North Carolina. While nine of Frey’s 14 reported arrests would have occurred when he was a minor, there still remained five cases for which a booking photo (not to mention police and court records) should have existed.
