Ted Botha

The biggest success story of the TV season, Book, has caught the nation by storm. None of the producers from The Bachelor, Fear Factor and The Osbornes can quite believe that the primetime ratings were stolen from under their noses by a program that is, essentially, Big Brother Meets a Tome.

"The whole concept is kind of weird when you think about it," said one television executive, who refused to be named because he'd originally turned down the idea. "I mean, people wanting to read a book instead of watching TV is weird enough. But people watching people read?"

His network wasn't alone in turning down the idea for Book . Even though it was already a success on TV in France, they all believed that whereas the French might get excited about watching people read, Americans wouldn't. Little could they have anticipated the frenzy that would meet the first show, where Heather from Milwaukee, reading Catcher in the Rye in the bathtub, played off against mother-of-six Erma, who had chosen to read several copies of Eloise back to back while standing in the children's section of her local Barnes & Noble.

By the second week, viewers were already high on Book Fever or, as TV Guide trumpeted on its cover, Joie de livre! In the hope of becoming audience members, people lined up at the studio on Broadway days before the taping of the show, wearing T-shirts that said things like "Do you know who Ahab is?" and "I live at the public library".

"I never knew that books could be like, well, television," said a woman leaving a recently taped show. "They're so emotional. Tears, laughter, and all that stuff. Like who ever would have thought there could be so much drama in something called Lolita ?"

With so many highpoints this season, it's hard to focus on just one episode. Will anyone forget the deadlock of Show Number Five, which pitted a single reading of The Lord of the Flies against multiple readings of The Bridges at Madison County ? Or the tragedy of Bill from Indiana falling asleep behind his desk during the very last pages of Ulysses ? For us, it was the Romance vs. Thriller Playoff that really turned into the equivalent of an electronic pageturner.

But in the true spirit of reality biblio-TV, the best was saved for the season finale, with librarian Susan from Milwaukee competing against John, the retired encyclopedia salesman from Des Moines. Despite rumors that the show had been rigged, especially after the newspapers found out that John had recently taken a speed-reading course, it went ahead. And thank heavens for that.

How else would we have gotten to see Susan starting her daily commute to work two hours earlier, just so that she could use the time on the subway to read? Or John regaling his grandchildren with Dostoevsky at bedtime every night for two months? The nail-biting finish was only topped by Susan's decision to take the first prize of a book contract rather than dinner with last year's Nobel laureate for literature.

"Now everyone wants to know what Susan's reading," said her agent. "Paparazzi keep following her onto the subway trying to get a shot of the book she's busy with. It has gotten so bad that she's started taking cabs instead."

Spin-off shows are already in the pipeline. NBC has got Genre Showdown , while CBS has optioned the castaway-on-an-island No Food, Ten Books, Two Weeks . In the tentatively titled Whose Idea is it Anyway? the cameras will follow an author through the angst of writing a novel.

Meanwhile, book sales continue to soar, kids want to read the books of the TV series they've been watching, Playstation 2 has just brought out a version of The Corrections , and Heidi Klum will be on the cover of the next Vogue holding a copy of Tristam Shandy. And you can be sure that at this year's Oscars the buzz will be as much about whether the actors are wearing Donna Karan or reading Donna Tartt.

"Not since Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe has there been such a highly publicized marriage of showbiz and literature," said one producer. "Let's just hope this lasts longer than they did - or at least through next season."

Submitted to The New Yorker, but rejected with the standard rejection letter, although an editor had written something underneath and signed it. "We're sorry to say that this manuscript is not right for us, in spite of its evident merit. Unfortunately, we are receiving so many submissions that it is impossible for us to reply more specifically. We thank you for the chance to consider your work. The Editors."