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Better Angels is way too dense for me to imagine it ever getting up towards the top of the bestseller lists. Gladwrlls stuff is a lot more tuned for mass appeal
by wutbrodo 9y ago
Better Angels is way too dense for me to imagine it ever getting up towards the top of the bestseller lists. Gladwrlls stuff is a lot more tuned for mass appeal.
- inputcoffee 9y agoI actually thought it might appear in the purchase list but not in the read list, or perhaps at a lower spot on the read list. The divergence in the lists makes for some great speculation.
- thaumasiotes 9y ago> Better Angels is way too dense for me to imagine it ever getting up towards the top of the bestseller lists. If Oprah recommended a book, a lot of people would buy it even if they had no intention of reading it, and similarly for other major cultural figures.
- wutbrodo 9y agoAh thanks for the info. I have no idea what books Oprah recommends but I'm surprised this was one of them. I've read it, and I liked but not loved it, but it certainly wasn't in line with what my vague understanding of Oprah's book club was.
- thaumasiotes 9y agoI'm not claiming that Oprah recommended any book. I'm saying that "Better Angels is too dense to be a bestseller" doesn't work as a counterargument to "a celebrity recommended it, so I thought Better Angels would have better sales".
- wutbrodo 9y agoI disagree. The reason I was surprised when I thought you were saying Oprah recommended it is that Oprah doesn't really recommend books like this. That's not unrelated to the fact that her audience would think "man, Oprah's book recs suck" if she kept recommending books too dense for her audience.
- thaumasiotes 9y agoOf the millions of people who bought Obama's biography, how many do you think read it? It's dense. But for a lot of people, the point of buying a book is to let other people know that you bought it.