Horrors

So I'm in Costco today, picking up my usual weekly double of bananas and bagged salad, and as I'm making my way to the traffic jam that is the weekend checkout line, I steal a quick glimpse of the books on sale at tables in the middle of the store. But I do a double take to make certain that my eyes are not deceiving me. I thought I saw Tolstoy, but that seems out of place for Costco, which sells mainly best-sellers and cookbooks, not literary classics. A second, longer, more careful look confirms that I did indeed spy Anna Karenina, and also the sad truth of it: Tolstoy's great novel is a summer selection of Oprah's Book Club.

Nooooooooo!!!! While I consider Anna K (Karenina, not Kournikova) one of the all-time literary masterpieces and a must-read for anyone who appreciates good literature, I feel that it's somehow cheapened by having earned such an honor(?) from Oprah herself. But at least if Ms. Harpo saw fit to assign a 900-page tome for summer homework, she chose a master work of Russian literature, rather than, say, the drivel of Ayn Rand.