Oprah's Book Club

What do all Oprah's-Book-Club books have in common? The price tag. Any published work stamped with the famous "O" automatically costs a couple more dollars. Typically classics are cheap, or at least less expensive than newly released paperbacks, but William Faulkner's Light In August is $11.16. Some other pricey titles include As I Lay Dying ($10.36) and The Sound and the Fury ($9.46) by William Faulkner, One Hundred Years Of Solitude ($10.17) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Cry the Beloved Country ($10.20) by Alan Paton, and Middlesex ($8.99) by Jeffrey Eugenides. These numbers are fairly reasonable when you consider the price of a hardcover book, but these are the prices of paperbacks. It's ridiculous! In 2002, an copy of Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy was a reasonable $6.95. Ever since 2004, the year it was added to Oprah's list, a paperback edition has been $10.88. Coincidence? I think not!

Disclaimer:
I have nothing against Oprah. I've only seen her show twice, but that has more to do with my distaste for TV than it does Oprah herself. I admire her because she uses her fame to do so many good things. Look how many people are reading and talking about literature thanks to her book club. I just wish the book publishers would stop trying to make a fortune off her. It's drilling a deep hole in my wallet. I suppose I could go to the library, but it's very difficult for me to get through a book without writing in it. Something tells me the library wouldn't appreciate my annotations.