Two names you may not have expected to hear in the same sentence — Glenn Beck and Oprah Winfrey. Nonetheless, Motoko Rich’s headline in the NYT today says that “Glenn Beck Is Becoming New Oprah.”

But a Beck book is quite different from an Oprah book. Beck likes thrillers, especially ones that reflect his own political stances (Brad Thor, James Rollins, Vince Flynn). He’s also picked some authors who, as Beck delicately puts it, are “on the liberal side of things, which is, you know fine.”

Andrew Gross, for instance, tells Rich that the Beck attention gives with one hand and takes away with the other; conservatives who bought the book based on Beck’s recommendation are angry that they were duped into buying a “bunch of lefty” garbage. Meanwhile, his liberal fans are suspicious of his association with Beck.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 5:13 pm and is filed under Books & TV, Reading Trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.