Today, Salon is running a point/counterpoint on the Oprah book club, in honor of her receiving a special medal from the National Book Awards. My take on Oprah’s book club is this: Oprah exposes millions of people who otherwise would have never picked up a trade paperback or set foot in Barnes & Noble to pretty good works by underappreciated writers every month. The worst things the author of the con article can say are that some of the novels aren’t up to his literary standards, and that the vast majority of the people who buy book club books don’t go on to buy lots of other books. To which I say that the book club isn’t aimed for snobs like him, and that you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink.