On this week's "Not My Job" segment of Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me!, host Peter Sagal's guest contestant is romance novelist Nora Roberts, who writes thrillers, as well, under the pseudonym JD Robb -- who has 198 novels on the New York Times best-seller list. How is that even possible, to even write that many books?? If you start writing when you're 20, and keep writing until you're 66, as she is, that means you'd have to write four books every year -- and all of them on the best-seller list. Bizarre. And this doesn't count the books she's written that didn't make the best-seller list. (I think that may be why she's a bit uncommunicative at the beginning of the interview when host Sagal asks her a few times about how long it takes her to write a book. She probably doesn't want to say, "Seven weeks.") She opens up later, though, and it's an enjoyable interview..
I mean, just simply reading 198 novels in 40 years would be a lot. That's five a year, every year, for almost half a century.
2 Comments
Lisa
2/28/2017 12:19:33 am
Reading five novels in a year is a lot...? How long does it take you to read a novel?
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Robert Elisberg
2/28/2017 08:41:22 am
Thanks for your note. But to be clear, I didn't say reading five novels a year is a lot. I said doing it every single year for nearly half a century is a lot. And I wrote that because a LOT of people have told me when I'm recommended a book to them that they're so busy they haven't read even one novel in a decade. It's not a question for many people how long it takes them to read a book, but finding the time to read. Maybe they're working long hours, or holding down two jobs, or raising a brood of kids. And it also depends how long the book is -- a 250-page novel zips by so much faster than one that's 700 pages. Or who the author is. (Umberto Eco reads SO much slower than Harlen Coben...) So, yes, I stand firmly by my quip -- and it *was* just a quip -- that for many people, if not most, reading five novels a year, every year for nearly half a century is a lot.
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AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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