I've just read that Oprah has chosen a Cormac McCarthy novel—a recent one called The Road—as the latest selection for her book club.

"It's unlike anything I've ever chosen as a book club selection before because it's post-apocalyptic. (It is) very unusual for me to select this book, but it's fascinating," she said on her show.

Oprah also hinted at a few future picks she was mulling over:

Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow: "I know it seems like a strange pick, but I have to say I liked all 400 characters, and I think it's worth reading all 800 pages of it just for a phrase like 'the bitter chuckles, like a rude metal double-fart,' don't you?"

Jean Paul Sartre's L'Être et le néant: Essai d'ontologie phénoménologique: "This one is not that unusual for me. I keep it on the little stand next to the toilet (Steadman calls it "my throne"—I call the bidet his). As for this selection, I just adore it in the original French. I hope my book clubbers don't find the language too daunting."

The Marquis de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom: "Now, this is the book on the little table next to Steadman's bidet. He turned me onto it.  And I just fell in love with the satirico-novelistic elements of the text!"

As for Oprah's current pick: I myself have a long and storied history with Cormac McCarthy, starting with his ominous Outer Dark, and The Orchard Keeper, which I read nearly twenty years ago, to Suttree, a sort of Huck Finn on crystal, which accompanied me at a particularly picaresque point in my life, and the superbly apocalyptic Blood Meridian (my personal fave), after which we parted ways. I did not read his Border Trilogy, and I have not read The Road. It's not that I think I'm too cool for Cormac now, or whatever, it's just that, well, our roads diverged.

Now that he's joined forces with Oprah, though, I have a feeling we'll be seeing a lot more of each other. I mean, he's done, like, two interviews in the past forty years, and now he's going to be on Oprah. I have to tell you: I can't wait.

And just for the record, I don't like to think of myself as someone who tosses out obscure band names or book titles, and is supremely satisfied when no one knows what I'm talking about. I recognize that among youths this is both a necessary and oddly pleasurable experience, finding as many ways as possible not to communicate with people. But as you get older you realize how difficult communicating even very simple things already is, and that you don't really have to work at it at all.

I am happy for Cormac, and for Oprah, and I may even buy his new book and read it just to show there are no hard feelings.