By 
Creating the world's most well-received book club was, in the beginning, just a lark.
It started because of Alice McGee, who was working as an intern the day I auditioned for AM Chicago, Labor Day 1983. Alice went from opening mail to becoming my assistant. Eventually I asked her to be my publicist, then a producer, then a senior producer of my show.
In 1985, when I finished filming The Color Purple, she surprised me with a leather-bound copy of the novel with an inscription about Sofia, the character I portrayed. And every Christmas for the next two decades, she gave me a specially leather-bound copy of my most-loved book of the year. We talked books all the time and always shared our favorites.
One day in 1996, Alice casually said, "Since you love books so much, why don’t you talk about some of them with the audience?"
That would never work, I said. "The only reason it works for you and me is, we've actually read the books. You can’t hold an audience’s interest in books they haven’t read."
To which Alice came back with: "Why don’t you ask them to read the book?"
Bing, bing, bing—lightbulb moment! And so the book club was born.
An enterprising friend once wondered, "How much do you make from each book you recommend?"
"I make no profit from any book," I said.
"Then what are you doing it for?" he asked incredulously.
"Because I love books and the community that’s created when people share them."
That was true in 1996 and remains so today. I particularly like helping unknown authors find new audiences, introducing them to readers who might never have found them otherwise.
Many a time I called a publisher to inform them of my choice and learned they’d been planning a first printing of 7,000 copies. More than a few of those titles would go on to sell millions—though it wasn’t until after The Oprah Show ended that I realized just how many millions and millions of books had been sold because of the club.
In my eyes, however, that was never what the book club was about. For me the reward has always been the way your mind is expanded when you’re exposed to new adventures and ideas. And what the writer Andre Dubus III calls "the sacred connection between readers and characters."
My most recent book club selection, Michelle Obama’s Becoming, needed no help from me; it was already a best-seller in preorders before it ever landed on a bookstore shelf.
I chose it because it was just too sumptuously compelling not to. And I encouraged book clubs everywhere to choose it as well, because after my first read I recognized the book’s power to change the way women see themselves and their journeys of becoming more of who they’re meant to be.
Every year I travel to my school in South Africa to teach the senior class my version of Life 101—trying to cram into one week everything I wish someone had told me before college. This time around, I used Becoming as inspiration to help my girls bear witness to their own becoming with more tolerant and receptive hearts.
That’s what great books do, especially when shared. They shine a light on the unfolding of our own stories. And this I know for sure: If you open yourself when you open a good book, it will continue to illuminate your life even after The End.
This column originally appeared in the February 2019 issue of O.
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