LIT 50
Who really books in Chicago
Nos. 1 - 10

1
Oprah
The Story of O
The retail numbers have proven it for years, and last November the National Book Foundation confirmed what we all already know, awarding Oprah their fiftieth anniversary Gold Medal for her dedication to promoting the joys and benefits of reading. While that’s undeniably true, maybe they also should’ve noted the joys and benefits she provides for pet authors’ careers: Eight of 1999’s Oprah’s Book Club paperback picks ran up a combined 171 bestselling weeks on the Publishers Weekly charts, reprensenting nearly 22 percent of all available slots. Three of the year’s million-plus trade fiction sellers were Oprah-anointed ("The Pilot’s Wife" by Anita Shreve, "The Reader" by Bernard Schlink and Billie Letts’ "Where the Heart Is"). Book Club reads by Isabel Allende, A. Manette Ansay, Robert Morgan, Tawni O’Dell (who knocked John Grisham from the top PW spot) and first-time novelists Janet Finch and Melinda Haynes all skyrocketed up the PW and New York Times charts and saw repeated printings. In December, Oprah’s production of an ABC-TV movie of the already bestselling "Tuesdays With Morrie" boosted national chains’ (Barnes & Noble, Borders and Waldenbooks) sales of the Mitch Albom book from 19,300 to 106,000 in a week. And, of course, in April Oprah increased her newsstand presence with her own O magazine, featuring plenty of book talk and columns by "Oprah" show regulars like self-help scion Gary Zukav (whose "The Seat of the Soul" topped the May 8 PW trade paperback list while his new "Soul Stories" was the #4 hardcover nonfiction seller). With commitments for 600 ad pages—totalling $20 million—for the first year, a print run of one million-plus and plans to go from bi-monthly to monthly in the fall, O has had only one real setback: trademark contention from a German magazine of the same name.

2
Scott Turow
Letter of the law
While John Grisham was out rattling his saber against the evils of Oliver Stone, the original lawyer/author, Scott Turow, last fall and winter starred in a quietly witty television ad for barnesandnoble.com (aka bn.com), which showed the million-selling author to be an ordinary guy—to the point of absolute anonymity, as he personally delivered copies of "Personal Injuries" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) to readers’ doors and goes unrecognized. His name, however, is one of the most recognizable on bookstore shelves—and bestseller lists; released last October, "PI" shot straight to Publisher’s Weekly’s #1 spot its first week out, staying on the chart for fourteen weeks and clocking in at #19 among 1999’s fiction top sellers. By December, the book had already sold more copies than 1996’s "The Laws of Our Fathers"; it’ll be interesting to see if the upcoming big-screen version, starring Dustin Hoffman, boosts numbers anywhere near "Presumed Innocent"’s 4.7 million sold.

3
Studs Terkel
Talking head
There won’t be another Studs. The twentieth century is past, but Studs Terkel persists. What a lovely, perfect title to his most recent tome: "The Spectator" (New Press). Yes, but what about the listener? A collection of transcripts from his forty-five-year-running radio show, "The Spectator" reveals more of the passion that is the man in the flesh than the patient, receptive art of his oral histories such as "Coming of Age," "The Good War" and "Division Street: America." (There are reportedly thousands more to be catalogued and issued on CD and tape.) Freshly turned 88, the tousle of white hair now a wisp like a fleeting thought, Chicago’s great oral historian continues to thrive. The eloquent, prolific chronicler called his memoir "Talking to Myself," and he likes to joke that he does that a lot nowadays, but at least he’s got an enthusiastic audience. A lesson for the writer and those intrigued by the life well lived: Listen closely enough? You live forever.

4
Roger Ebert
Page thumber
On the beat for decades and seldom stumped for a way into the cinematic circumstance of one of the half-dozen or more movies he may have seen in the past week, Ebert’s found unique ways to encircle more of the moviegoing experience: revisiting classic movies every two weeks in his "Great Movies" column (for a book surely to come); taking up the minutiae of the flickers in "The Movie Answer Man" on alternate weeks. (Last summer, an updated edition of material drawn from it was published by Andrews McMeel as "Ebert’s Bigger Little Movie Glossary.") His Website, www.suntimes.com/ebert, linking almost fifteen years’ worth of his Sun-Times columns, is not above crowing that it was "Selected 1999’s Best Film Review Website" by the Online Film Critics Association. "Roger Ebert’s Movie Yearbook 2000," the veteran critic’s annual, was issued in the fall, folding in the best of his full-length reviews from the past year, adding a few tens of thousands more to his million-plus sales of the series. Oh yeah, and there’s that TV show. Week after week, Ebert pits his passion and experience against welterweights: He’s got this movie review thing going, but he remains the indisputable television critic heavyweight.

5
Andrew Greeley
Ace Greeley
Is it a sin, or just divine intervention? The priest with the most—that is twenty million books sold—just keeps plugging away, and, at 72, seems to be speeding up rather than slowing down. And he switches hats faster than the pope in a downpour. Last September Greeley revisited World War II-era romance with "Younger Than Springtime" (Forge). Last December saw an update to his rolling autobiography "Furthermore! Memories of a Parish Priest" (Forge). Always the salesman, in January he pushed out another romance, "Irish Eyes: A Nuala Anne McGrail Novel" (Forge). He donned a sociologist’s cap for an exploration of "saints, angels and the Mother of Jesus," you know, the things "everyday Catholics" recognize, in "The Catholic Imagination" (University of California Press). And he’ll return to mysteries in July with the Chicago-themed "The Bishop and the Missing L Train: A Blackie Ryan Story" (Forge). And that doesn’t even count the time he spends shuttling between teaching jobs at University of Chicago and University of Arizona. And though many of his thirty-plus novels rely on that one-two punch of religion and sex, the Catholic Church might look to Greeley for inspiration—he’s obviously got the gospel that sells.

6
E. Lynn Harris
E.rotica
Who says mergers are always a bad thing? The recent absorption of Anchor Books into the Vintage Publishing empire is sure to benefit E. Lynn Harris; the latter is working to build Harris’ largest trade paperback audience ever with the summer release of "Abide With Me," the hardcover of which found its way on to the New York Times, Publisher’s Weekly and Blackboard bestsellers list last year. Depending on whom you ask, E. Lynn Harris is either the best-selling African-American male novelist of the decade (PW) or one of the best-selling African-American male novelists of the decade (his publisher, Doubleday). In any case, the author has won plenty of fans—one million copies of his books are in print—with his pop novels, stories of love, romance, friendship and betrayal that seamlessly blend straight and gay lifestyles. July brings his next, "Not A Day Goes By."

7
Elizabeth Taylor
Taylor Made
In the Tribune Tower, she’s the lady with the famous name and the double duty. Besides helming the paper’s Sunday magazine, Elizabeth Taylor is the Trib’s literary editor; she’s been deciding who gets reviewed, and by whom, since she took the post in 1996. Increased attention to book culture at the World’s Greatest Newspaper was evidenced by a recent front-page story about Saul Bellow and Allan Bloom, and by the Book section’s new prominence since switching from magazine format to broadsheet. This move was urged by Taylor, she says, because "readers kept telling us they couldn’t find the section." She and deputy editor Carolyn Alessio, who Taylor hastens to give much credit for her successes, have no patience for mere book reports: "I really do believe," says Taylor, "that reviews should be self-contained, well-written and well-argued essays." This book season brings one new work that Taylor is intimately familiar with: "American Pharaoh" (Little, Brown), her Richard J. Daley bio written in collaboration with Adam Cohen.

8
Alan Aldworth
Losing His Ed?
Trib Ed, the largest publisher of supplemental education materials in the country, is now officially the bulimic of the book world. For years they’ve been bingeing on smaller companies—recently cramming in a heaping helping of math-book makers South-Western Educational Publishing with a side of health-eders Meeks Heit Publishing into their already-bloated stomach—and now it seems that the Goliath is ready to purge. GM Aldworth, who took the reins from the retired Robert Bosau January 1, reports that the company is indeed for sale. Although their immediate future is uncertain, don’t expect them to be on the auction block for long: ranked #1 among industry peers in Fortune magazine three years running, the company generates about $400 million in annual revenues.

9
Garry Wills
Free Wills
Historian, theologian and all-around cultural critic, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Wills is an unstoppable force—pumping out books on a variety of intriguing topics with near-stunning regularity. And his slate during the last year has been nothing short of magical, starting off with last June’s biography "Saint Augustine" (Viking). Show us another intellectual who can chronicle a saint—one who wrote thirteen volumes of his own—in a mere 145 pages. In September his collaboration with Studs Terkel, "The Spectator: Talk About Movies and Plays With Those Who Made Them" (New Press), added another chapter to the great oral historian’s repertoire. And in October, the tour de force, "A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government," started arguments—and settled others—across the country, turning up in water cooler conversation—and even in the hands of pseudo-White House staffers in the mainstream world of TV’s "The West Wing." And he’s not slowing, or backing, down. His newest opus, "Papal Sin" (Doubleday), takes a hard look at deceit, morality and basic wrongdoings practiced, he argues, historically by the power structure of the Catholic Church. Ouch!

10
Sara Paretsky
Que Sara, Sara
V.I. Warshawski might have gone to jail, but creator Paretsky is hightailing it to Europe, spending nearly a month in the U.K. this July and August promoting detective V.I’s newest adventure, "Hard Time" (Delacorte). And why not? The novel’s October 1999 release marked a triumphant return for Paretsky, whose signature detective had taken a five-year hiatus before ending up in the slammer. The book sold more than 125,000 copies by the end of 1999, proving the fans are still there—and hungry for news of V.I. Fans logging on to Paretsky’s Website, www.saraparetsky.com, are apparently even hungrier—there’s a note directing those interested in another V.I. movie to fax the Disney exec in charge of greenlighting it. In the meantime, they can catch up with Paretsky during an appearance at this year’s Printers Row Book Fair.

SUMMER TRAVEL
Snappy suggestions for places you can drive in a day

VIDEO PARADISO
Scanning the racks of Chicago's international video emporiums

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