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Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, and Cheryl Strayed Walk Into a Bar…

Wallace Yovetich

Staff Writer

Wallace Yovetich grew up in a home where reading was preferred to TV, playing outside was actually fun, and she was thrilled when her older brothers weren’t home so she could have a turn on the Atari. Now-a-days she watches a bit more TV, and considers sitting on the porch swing (with her laptop) “playing outside”. She still thinks reading is preferable to most things, though she’d really like to find out where her mom put that old Atari (Frogger addicts die hard). She runs a series of Read-a-Longs throughout the year (as well as posting fun bookish tidbits throughout the week) on her blog, Unputdownables. After teaching for seven years, Wallace is now an aspiring writer. Blog: Unputdownables Twitter: @WallaceYovetich

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OK, so they didn’t walk into a bar, and I don’t really know how these deals happen, but do you remember back in February when we didn’t know who Sugar (from The Rumpus) was, and she was having her “coming out” party because her book was being published?

Fast-forward three months, and said book has been chosen for the re-launch of Oprah’s book club and Reese Witherspoon has bought the film rights.

So when I said, “Because someday, you’ll remember that you once read an article about an amazing writer who used to go by the name Sugar and you had the chance to experience the occasion of learning who she really was but you missed it…” I was dead on. You should listen to me. Always. Because if we had all pooled together and bought the film rights to a book that months later Oprah Winfrey would choose as her book club book, we’d each have one of these houses by the time the movie finished its first weekend at the box office.

I’m just sayin’.

What do you think of memoirs being turned into movies? I admit that I’m nervous for Ms. Strayed. Although I loved Eat, Pray, Love (and more people than care to admit it liked it too, yes, I’m talking to you there with the shifty eyes and the worn out, dog eared copy in the back of your closet), it took a serious beating the more popular it got, and after the movie… fuhgeddaboudit. No one was taking Ms. Gilbert seriously anymore. Is it possible to zoom to the stars too fast, or is this the nature of book publishing today: you’re nobody until somebody wants to make it a movie?