I actually agree, that was a terrible book and I never really grasped the hype.

Frey wrote.
Like this.
And.
You know, I couldn't get into it.
Understood?

But White Oleander was an Oprah pick, no? She's Come Undone, Middlesex, Pillars of The Earth...all good reads. But generally everything she touches seems cheapened somehow, I understand where you're coming from. Oprah = bad, stinky vibes.

It seems like everytime she praises a book, it becomes connoted with bored housewives and 12 year-olds.

Pillars of Earth is awesome. Had no idea that was on her list.

anna karenina is on the list too. some other good books ...

i wonder if she personally picks them?

I kind of doubt it, but who knows, she might surprise me. I know that on Richard and Judy's old show there was a woman whose job it was to pick the books they were recommending. I read an interview with her and she had the publishing world at her feet; getting a book on one of those shows is the golden ticket of modern writing.

I am sure these have been mentioned somewhere in here and I have not had time to read the entire thread but the ones that come first to my mind are

Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita
Dante's Divine Comedy (all 3 parts- complete)
Shakespeare- Hamlet
TS Eliot- (poem) Prufrock

(ack- my spacebar keepsstickingion this computer!)

Salinger- Catcher in the Rye
too much more to even think of!
Faulkner-The Sound and the Fury