Books

I have read the binding of The Bridges of Madison County, and I reckon that's quite enough. I've cooked one recipe from In the Kitchen With Rosie and examined the acknowledgments page of Pope John Paul II's Crossing the Threshold of Hope. I still haven't cracked A Brief History of Time, of course, but I figure there's an infinite amount of time left for that sort of thing. The way I understand it, what's most notable about books on the best-seller list is that they sell. It doesn't necessarily follow that they're read. Which at least explains the sales figures for The Book of Virtues.

Whether or not you've finished Foucault's Pendulum, though, the best-seller lists of the past five years are a great gauge for tracking the preoccupations of the reading (or intending-to-read) public. An examination of EW's accumulated lists suggests that the more covers change, the more content stays the same.

Nowhere is this more true than in fiction. Our debut-issue fiction best-seller list was dominated by Danielle Steel and Stephen King, James Michener and Tom Clancy, Robin Cook and Dean Koontz and Dick Francis. Last week, Cook and Clancy were still there, and Koontz and Crichton were on the mass-market paperback list. (Only by fluke are the charts missing John Grisham, the good ol' lawyer who changed the face of bookselling.)

We want the same, only we want it a little different: That's what the sales figures say. On our first nonfiction list, Robert Fulghum hit the royalty jackpot with two inspirational books; last week, Marianne Williamson, Susan Powter, John Gray, and the Pope were doing a good business with inspiring words about love, stopping the insanity, the difference between men and women, and Catholicism. Back then, book buyers were reading (or at least purchasing) books about getting rich (Wealth Without Risk), dieting (The T-Factor Diet, whatever the T-factor was), Wall Street (Liar's Poker), and Roseanne (My Life as a Woman, written when the author was still calling herself Roseanne Barr). Now we've got books about getting rich (The Warren Buffett Way), dieting (In the Kitchen With Rosie), Pennsylvania Avenue (Inside the White House), and viral plagues (The Hot Zone).

Over the past five years, women have run with the wolves, men have felt the fire in their bellies, grown children have purged themselves of toxic parents, and parents have attempted to learn the seven habits of highly effective people. Readers have listened to Prozac, spent a year in Provence, taken care of the soul, and been embraced by the light. Star gimmick authors came and went, including Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern, and Jerry Seinfeld. Five years ago, business writer Harvey Mackay warned Beware the Naked Man Who Offers You His Shirt. This year, comedian Tim Allen warned Don't Stand Too Close to a Naked Man.

It's not true that high-quality literature gets lost in the marketplace. Milan Kundera, Gabriel García Márquez, Jane Smiley, Cormac McCarthy, Toni Morrison, Alex Kotlowitz, and even Edith Wharton have had their day. But it is true that most readers of How to Satisfy a Woman Every Time probably forget how after every time. For that reason alone, we mortals keep buying books -- hoping that someday the knowledge will stick, and eager, in the meantime, for the solace of a good story.