Oprah's Book Club 2.0 is a book club founded June 1, 2012, by Oprah Winfrey in a joint project between OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network and '' O: The Oprah Magazine''. The club is a re-launch of the original

Oprah's Book Club Oprah's Book Club was a book discussion club segment of the American talk show ''The Oprah Winfrey Show'', highlighting books chosen by host Oprah Winfrey. Winfrey started the book club in 1996, selecting a new book, usually a novel, for viewers ...

, which ran for 15 years and ended in 2011, but as the "2.0" name suggests, digital media is the new focus. It incorporates the use of various social media platforms (

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

) and

e-reader An e-reader, also called an e-book reader or e-book device, is a mobile electronic device that is designed primarily for the purpose of reading digital e-books and periodicals. Any device that can display text on a screen may act as an e-read ...

s that allow for the quoting and uploading of passages and notes for discussion, among other features. On March 25, 2019,

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company ...

and Oprah announced a revival of a video version of Oprah's Book Club that will air on

Apple TV+ Apple TV is a digital media player and microconsole developed and marketed by Apple Inc. It is a small network appliance hardware that plays received media data such as video and audio to a television set or external display. Since its secon ...

History

The book club was announced June 1, 2012. Critics at the time pointed out that her online audience was not as large as it was previously with network television, and the new club would be a test if she still had the "Oprah Effect" with the reading public to create hits as before. As the '' New York Times Book Review'' reported a few months later, in the August 19 issue,

Cheryl Strayed Cheryl Strayed (; née Nyland; born September 17, 1968) is an American writer and podcast host. She has written four books: the novel ''Torch'' (2006) and the nonfiction books '' Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail'' (2012), '' Ti ...

's ''

Wild Wild, wild, wilds or wild may refer to: Common meanings * Wild animal * Wilderness, a wild natural environment * Wildness, the quality of being wild or untamed Art, media and entertainment Film and television * ''Wild'' (2014 film), a 2014 A ...

'' had dropped off the ''New York Times'' Best Seller List by May 20, but after its selection by Oprah in early June, it reached No. 1 Non-fiction by July 15, and stayed there for many weeks, thus, said the ''Times'', confirming the "Oprah Effect" still worked.

Oprah's Book Club 2.0 selections

Controversies

On January 21, 2020, Oprah announced her next book club selection would be ''

American Dirt ''American Dirt'' is a 2020 novel by American author Jeanine Cummins, published by Flatiron Books. The book is about a Mexican bookseller who is forced to flee as an illegal immigrant to the United States, along with her son, after her journalis ...

'' by

Jeanine Cummins Jeanine Cummins (born December 6, 1974) is an American author, of Irish and Puerto Rican heritage. She has written four books: a memoir titled ''A Rip in Heaven'' and three novels, ''The Outside Boy,'' ''The Crooked Branch'', and ''American Dir ...

. The novel, about a Mexican woman fleeing to America after being targeted by a drug cartel, came under scrutiny as Cummins was a white woman with no connection to Mexico and marketing for the book claimed she had a special connection to the material because her husband had at one point been an undocumented immigrant without ever revealing he was a white Irishman. 142 authors including R. O. Kwon,

Tommy Orange Tommy may refer to: People * Tommy (given name) * Tommy Atkins, or just Tommy, a slang term for a common soldier in the British Army Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''Tommy'' (1931 film), a Soviet drama film * ''Tommy'' (1975 fi ...

and

Valeria Luiselli Valeria Luiselli (born August 16, 1983) is a Mexican author living in the United States. She is the author of the book of essays ''Sidewalks'' and the novel '' Faces in the Crowd'', which won the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First F ...

penned an open letter asking Oprah to rescind her endorsement of the book. ''My Dark Vanessa'' by

Kate Elizabeth Russell Kate Elizabeth Russell (born 1984) is an American author. Her debut novel, ''My Dark Vanessa'', was published in 2020 and became a national bestseller. Biography Russell was raised in the town of Clifton, Maine, attending John Bapst Memorial H ...

was originally selected for March 2020, but dropped after Russell was accused, without evidence, of plagiarizing Wendy C. Ortiz's 2014 memoir ''Excavation''. According to the

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. ne ...

, "Reviewers who looked at both books saw no evidence of plagiarism."

References

External links

Oprah's Book Club 2.0
official website. * Video announcement. {{Books Book Club 2.0 2012 establishments in the United States Book promotion