Literacy news
First episode of The TV Book Club airs
18 Feb 2009
New show The TV Book Club aired on More4 last night (Sunday 17 January) and will be repeated on Channel 4 on Mondays for the rest of the season.
The media coverage prior to the first episode helped to lift sales of the 10 titles chosen for the programme. According to Nielsen Bookscan, sales increased dramatically over the past two weeks for the 10 chosen books, from 29,631 books sold for the week ending 2 January to 43,180 for the week ending 9 January.
It is the most well known titles, by Sarah Waters and Nick Hornby, that have picked up the biggest sales.
However the show has received mixed reviews after its first episode.
Guests included Chris Evans, who was there to discuss his new autobiography It’s Not What You Think and Sarah Waters, author of ghost story The Little Stranger.
The Independent reported that:
“With Evans sitting in their midst, the club predictably "loved" his autobiography.
“However … the book of the week, Sarah Waters' ghost story, The Little Stranger, got less of an easy ride. Gok Wan said "the story didn't fascinate me", while an initially positive Nathaniel Parker agreed that it "floundered after a while", and the book's narrator was universally dismissed as a bore.”
Trade publication The Bookseller commented that:
“Bloggers were frustrated that the featured book only received a small amount of attention towards the end of the programme. One asked: " It was supposed to be a book club, so why did they only discuss the book for four minutes?" The BookRabbit blog responded: " Less focus on the celebs and ‘padding’ and more on the books themselves is all that is needed to help this programme fly."
To read more, please visit:
The Independent: www.independent.co.uk
The Bookseller: www.thebookseller.com
