Download e-book for iPad: Bestsellers: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short by John Sutherland

By John Sutherland

ISBN-10: 0199214891

ISBN-13: 9780199214891

Woman Chatterley's Lover. The Blue Lagoon. Portnoy's criticism. The Da Vinci Code. For the final century, the tastes and personal tastes of the typical reader were mirrored within the American and British bestseller lists, and this Very brief creation takes a fascinating glance through the lists to bare what now we have been reading--and why. John Sutherland exhibits that bestseller lists video display one of many most powerful pulses in smooth literature and are for that reason important of significant research. Exploring the connection among bestsellers and the models, ideologies, and cultural matters of the day, the booklet contains brief case-studies and full of life summaries of bestsellers over the years: from In His Steps--now virtually absolutely forgotten, however the largest all-time bestseller among 1895 and 1945--to long gone with the Wind, The Andromeda pressure, and The Da Vinci Code. Discussing either vintage and modern novels, along a few dazzling titles and long-forgotten names. Sutherland lifts the lid at the bestseller undefined, revealing what makes a ebook right into a bestseller and what separates bestsellers from canonical fiction.

Reviews:

His amiable trawl in the course of the heritage of well known books is usually unique Scott Pack, the days breezily exciting Kevin strength, Irish occasions (Dublin) Sutherland successfully demanding situations the belief book's advertisement good fortune by some means invalidates both its author's integrity or the severe acumen of its readers. as an alternative we're provided a believable imaginative and prescient of the blockbuster or the bodice-ripper as narrative in its purest shape. Jonathan Keates, TLS

Show description

Read Online or Download Bestsellers: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) PDF

Similar british literature books

Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) PDF

Jude the vague, through Thomas Hardy, is a part of the Barnes & Noble Classics sequence, which deals caliber variations at cheap costs to the coed and the overall reader, together with new scholarship, considerate layout, and pages of rigorously crafted extras. listed here are the various striking positive factors of Barnes & Noble Classics: All variations are superbly designed and are revealed to more suitable requisites; a few contain illustrations of ancient curiosity.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë PDF

Overview

Charlotte Brontë’s such a lot liked novel describes the passionate love among the brave orphan Jane Eyre and the bright, brooding, and domineering Rochester.

The loneliness and cruelty of Jane’s formative years strengthens her average independence and spirit, which turn out important while she takes a place as a governess at Thornfield corridor. yet after she falls in love along with her sardonic company, her discovery of his poor mystery forces her to make a heart-wrenching selection. Ever considering its booklet in 1847, Jane Eyre has enthralled all types of reader, from the main severe and cultivated to the youngest and such a lot unabashedly romantic. It lives as one of many nice triumphs of storytelling and as a relocating and unforgettable portrayal of a woman's quest for self-respect.

New PDF release: African Stories

Lengthy thought of Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing’s top selection of brief tales, African Stories—a principal e-book within the paintings of a really loved writer—is now again in print. this pretty assortment is an homage to her twenty-five years spent in Africa and a super portrait of African lifestyles.

Read e-book online The Ballad of the White Horse: An Epic Poem PDF

A rousing ballad in keeping with the real tale of mythical Saxon king Alfred the Great

in the dead of night occasions ahead of a unified England, warring tribes roved and sparred for territory around the British Isles. The Ballad of the White Horse documents the deeds and army accomplishments of Alfred the good as he defeats the invading Danes on the conflict of Ethandun.

Published in 1911, this poem follows the battle—from the collection of the chiefs to the final battle cry—with a care to rhythm, sound, and language that makes it an impressive murals in addition to an essential piece of English history.
 
an important impression at the constitution of Tolkien’s The Lord of the jewelry, The Ballad of the White Horse transforms the exciting exploits of a brave chief into an inspirational Christian allegory.
 
This e-book has been professionally proofread to make sure accuracy and clarity on all units.

Additional info for Bestsellers: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

Sample text

Why are they not browsing rationally among the vast array of reading matter on offer to them? Or, put another way, if it’s popular fiction they want, why are they not reading the bestsellers of ten, twenty, or a hundred years ago? With genre products, it is less mania than loyalty. Readers tend to be either brand-loyal to a particular category (science fiction, romance, horror) or to a particular author (see the myriad websites around, for example, Stephen King or Anne Rice). Given the fact that the essence of fiction marketing is variety, and constant renewal of stock, this loyalty too is as irrational as that mobilized to sell one-off blockbusters.

Send your answer to London, New York, Sydney, or Toronto. Or Berlin – since the parent Random House is now German-owned. ) The author Ken Follett, who was born and educated in Britain, sells very many more copies of his books in the US than in the UK, and his bestsellers, such as Code to Zero (#1, 2000), have American settings and characters. Where does he belong? Perhaps the answer will be found in his papers, deposited at Saginaw College in Michigan. For a hundred years, from the 1890s until the 1990s, British book culture (along with its European counterparts) was inherently inimical to the idea of the bestseller and disdained, entirely, any official ‘lists’.

Beneath mountainous piles of whatever ‘the book of the moment’, worthy books struggled to be seen. Books did not ‘compete’ with each other – they were ‘different’, as a successful 1960 British legal defence of retail price maintenance insisted (successfully; the Net Book Agreement was judged ‘legal’). No one ever said, as of books, ‘where baked beans are burned, men are burned’. Why, then, sell books like baked beans? Or so the British book trade felt. As a result of this cultural resistance, the first reliable lists did not arrive in the UK until the mid-1970s, when the Bookseller began 16 assembling them for the trade, and The Sunday Times began making them available to the reading public.

Download PDF sample

Bestsellers: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by John Sutherland


by Christopher
4.4

Rated 4.95 of 5 – based on 29 votes