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And You Get Counted! And You Get Counted!: Oprah’s Book Club by the Numbers

Liberty Hardy Mar 29, 2023

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Liberty Hardy

Senior Contributing Editor

Liberty Hardy is an unrepentant velocireader, writer, bitey mad lady, and tattoo canvas. Turn-ons include books, books and books. Her favorite exclamation is “Holy cats!” Liberty reads more than should be legal, sleeps very little, frequently writes on her belly with Sharpie markers, and when she dies, she’s leaving her body to library science. Until then, she lives with her three cats, Millay, Farrokh, and Zevon, in Maine. She is also right behind you. Just kidding! She’s too busy reading. Twitter: @MissLiberty

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Oprah’s just chosen her 100th selection for her book club, so now seems like a good time to crunch some numbers (because the number 100 makes the percentage math really easy.) Oprah started the book club in 1996 on her daytime talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show. Her first choice was The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard. The popularity of the club gave her picks enormous sales boosts. There is no denying the effect Oprah has on book club sales. After her show finished its run in 2011, she couldn’t stay away from books for long! She relaunched her club in 2012 with Wild by Cheryl Strayed, and has picked 29 more books since then. So for all you data nerds, or the bookishly curious, we’ve compiled information about Oprah’s book club by the numbers!

What’s the longest book? What’s the oldest book? These are some of the fun questions that will be answered. Like this: 59% of the book club picks have been by women, but books authored by men held the longest consecutive streak, with 15 titles from 55-70. Sixty-five percent of the authors on the list are white, 31% are Black, and the remaining 4% are Latine and South Asian. And there’s this morbid fact: 16% of the authors on Oprah’s list of 100 picks are dead, but only five of them were dead at the time their books were chosen. Read on for more informative stats and the complete list of 100 books!

Note: Actor Bill Cosby has been accused of multiple sexual assaults. His three books listed here (which are the only children’s books chosen to date) are included simply for the sake of accuracy and to present the full list.)

cover of The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett; light blue illustration of the front of a church

Number of pages

The longest pick is The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett, at a whopping 976 pages long. The shortest book (discounting the three kids books) is Night by Elie Wiesel at 116 pages.

300-399: 34%

200-299: 22%

400-499: 16%

500-599: 11%

600-699: 5%

100-199: 4%

0-99: 3%

900-999: 2%

800-899: 2%

700-799: 1%

cover of Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano; painting of a woman's face in pinks and greens

Year of Publication

The most recent publication chosen by Oprah is the newest selection, Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano, published just a few weeks ago. The oldest book chosen for the club is A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, from 1859, one of one three chosen from the 19th century.

1990-1999: 37%

2010-2019: 16%

2020-2023: 14%

2000-2009: 12%

1980-1989: 6%

1930-1939: 3%

1970-1979: 3%

1800s: 3%

1950-1959: 2%

1940-1949: 2%

1960-1969: 1%

1920-1929: 1%

cover of The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard; illustration of a small child over rippling water

Fiction or Nonfiction

Oprah’s selections have been overwhelmingly fiction, 85% of them, to be exact. (Or 84%, if you still count A Million Little Pieces as nonfiction, though James Frey admitted a lot of it was fiction.) The first novel featured is the first book club pick, The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard. The first work of nonfiction is the eighth selection, The Heart of a Woman by Maya Angelou, and the most recent work of nonfiction is Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole by Susan Cain.

Book covecover of The Sun Does Shine by Anthony Ray Hinton; orange with yellow rings radiating from the centerr of The Sun Does Shine

Goodreads Rating

How do readers rate Oprah’s picks? Generally really well. The highest rated pick according to Goodreads is Anthony Ray Hinton’s memoir about his time on death row for a crime he didn’t commit, The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life, Freedom, and Justice on Death Row, with 4.64 stars out of 5 (at the time of this post.) The lowest rated Oprah pick is Vinegar Hill by A. Manette Ansay, with 3.39 stars.

3.5-3.99 stars: 59%

4.0-4.49 stars: 39%

4.5-5.0 stars: 1%

3.0-3.49 stars: 1%

cover of Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons; picture of a white metal headboard and pillows

Repeat Appearances

Eleven authors have had books chosen for Oprah’s book club more than once. The first author was Kaye Gibbons, whose novels Ellen Foster and A Virtuous Woman were numbers 10 and 11. The other repeat authors are Toni Morrison, Jane Hamilton, Wally Lamb, Bill Cosby, Barbara Kingsolver, Marilynne Robinson, Charles Dickens, Jonathan Franzen, Gabriel García Márquez, and William Faulkner.

And now, the whole list!