When we're not producing Oprah Book Club selections, the book club team often works with other teams on their upcoming shows. I just finished working on a taping with radio personality Steve Harvey and an audience full of women for his new book, Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man. This instructional book offers the male perspective on relationships and has become a publishing sensation. The book has hit #1 on USA Today's bestseller list and is at the top of many other charts in only a matter of a few weeks.

You can read a chapter of Steve's book here: http://www.oprah.com/article/oprahshow/20090227_tows_steve-harvey-excerpt

I spoke to the audience before the show to find out what questions they had about men for Steve. After a few, "how do I find a good man" questions, some of the ladies felt comfortable enough to ask what they really wanted to know, which in this case was about S-E-X! Quite a few of those questions made me blush - not something I easily do - and finally I had to remind them that this was a daytime TV show, not HBO! But the taping turned out to be a really funny, tell-it-like-it-is type of show and I hope you check it out on Monday, March 23^rd, 2009.

I have to admit, Steve's book is as far away a departure from our book club selections as it comes, but it did get me thinking how good books come in all kinds of shapes, sizes, and topics. While Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man isn't going to be our next book club selection, Harvey's book has hit a nerve and I believe because the book does what I think is the best thing a book can do -- offer insight into a world you didn't know before you read the first page. Books worth reading are ones that entertain, teach, soothe, enlighten, and inform. That's why in my opinion it doesn't matter what you read, just that you do - that you're willing to take the time to listen to another voice, someone else's opinion or story, one page at a time.

Reading for me is all about the journey a book takes you on. The best books take me by the hand and lead me through a landscape of words that in the end transforms me into someone who is more compassionate, more courageous, and most of all more open to the full range of the human experience.

Now for me, the books that do this are novels - there's just nothing like getting lost in a good story! Since I read a lot of books for the book club, I've realized over the years that there are only a handful of books that I take the time to re-read. One of my favorites is Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison.

I first read this book when I was 16 years old and I've read it many times since (it was also an OBC pick in 1996). I'm not the same person I was when I first read those pages as a suburban teenager, but every time I read Morrison's book it expands the possibilities of what life can be. I guess I love Song of Solomon because it was the first book about a black family and community (we were black, not African American when I first read it) that I could relate to, that depicted the deeply felt connections to family and community that were essential to our survival in good times and bad. My favorite passage is one that Oprah has quoted on the show and are words I try to live by:

"Stop picking around the edges of the world. Take advantage, and if you can't take advantage, take disadvantage. We live here. On this planet, in this nation, in this country right here. Nowhere else! We got a home in this rock, don't you see? Nobody's starving in my home; nobody crying in my home, and if I got a home, you got one too! Grab it. Grab this land. Take it, hold it, my brothers, make it, my brothers, shake it, squeeze it, turn it, twist it, beat it, kick it, kiss it, whip it, stomp it, dig it, plow it, seed it, reap it, rent it, sell it, own it, build it, multiply it and pass it on-can you hear me? Pass it on!'"

--Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

You can learn more about Song of Solomon here: http://www.oprah.com/article/oprahsbookclub/pastselections/obc_pb_19961018_about)

Most of all, Morrison's book represents to me why some good books are GREAT books - because they contain in the pages stories that continue to captivate and inform its readers over and over again.

I want this blog to be a place where I can discuss why we read. Now that you know a little about my passion for the written word, I'd like to hear from those of you who get as much from reading as I do. With that in mind, my first question to you is what book or books did you learn the most from?

PS: Due to Harpo Legal Policy, we do not accept unsolicited manuscripts or books. I sincerely ask that you respect our policy, thank you.