Super Highly Covered Media Story

I first noticed the phenomenon in March 2003 with A Ship Made of Paper. A media blitz of enormous proportions hit that month with reviews and interviews with the author Scott Spencer. I hadn't read him before and it seemed like every news outlet was covering his book. I was intrigued more by the exposure than the plot line but read the book. It was a good story filled with discussion potential about love, race and stereotypes. All that coverage and I believe that book never made it to the New York Times Best Seller List.

Now I'm noticing the same phenom with Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story. Not that the Chicago Tribune has reviewed it yet, but almost everyone else has. NPR, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Entertainment Weekly, The Miami Herald, The Dallas Times, and the beloved BookPage distributed here at the library. I'm familiar with Shteyngart as mentioned in a previous blog of mine. He's wry, satirical and writes far fetched stories from an immigrant's point of view. I've got the book in my hand right now. I can't wait to see if it makes the Best Seller list.

While researching and verifying my memory of March 2003, I came across the best seller list of April 2003. The first week of that month a certain book made it to the list and stayed there for years. This book actually accumulated more media coverage after it hit the number one spot than before. Feel free to guess the title. And what drives your book choices- media coverage or a personal recommendation?

Super Sad True Love Story.

A Ship Made of Paper.

A Chance Meeting

I ran into a past acquaintance the other day in an office waiting room. The meeting was so unexpected and delightful, I've been mulling over a strategy for a repeat occurrence. There I was flipping through the pages of the December issue of Travel and Leisure, and Gary Shteyngart interrupted my viewing of a lovely snow scene in Montana. Gary and I met years ago....in Absurdistan, more specifically, when I was listening to his book Absurdistan. That story was mad cap, witty, and wry, and after a few sentences of the magazine article "A Winter's Tale," I recognized his familiar voice and looked at the byline.

It's really not surprising that book authors write elsewhere but I haven't paid attention to this particular path to finding reading material. Dominick Dunne comes to mind as an author that wrote extensively for magazines, as do various nonfiction authors. Novelists, I believe, are a little harder to run into.

Now, though, I have a strategy for a repeat occurrence. I've used the library database, General Reference Center Gold and I've found a list of 18 articles of his.

Do you have a novelist, you'd like to read more of? Let Readers' Services help you discover their other writings. It may not be a serendipitous as my experience but it may be just as delightful.