Hit Lit: Cracking the Code of the Twentieth Century's Biggest Bestsellers [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

What if someone with years of experience analyzing literature took a dozen blockbuster bestsellers, broke the novels down to their component parts, and figured out what they had in common? Is it possible to reverse-engineer the stories to see what makes them popular? Can we predict what books will become bestsellers? Could you use the data to construct your own bestseller?

Hit Lit contains some of the very elements you'd expect to find in those blockbusters - a tantalizing premise, the promise of a secret revealed, some familiar stories, and the chance to learn something new.

James W. Hall, a university English professor, recruited a group of students to read (or re-read) twelve super-bestsellers, novels that sold millions even before movies were made of them (and movies were made of all twelve of these books). They analyzed the books the way they normally deconstruct Henry James or Jane Austen classics.

They found that the bestsellers were similar to each other in many ways. They were often small stories told against sweeping backgrounds (Gone with the Wind, The Hunt for Red October), and they featured heroes who acted without spending a lot of time thinking (Shakespeare's Hamlet could never be a bestseller, apparently).

Hall came up with a list of elements he says are common to all the books they studied, but it seemed to me that there were plenty of exceptions to the rule. (Aren't there always?) Though he claims to have found that little time is spent on backstories and references to the characters' pasts are few, some of the books are quite heavy on backstory and reflective heroes, such as The Bridges of Madison County. In the spirit of Hit Lit, I read first chapters of several of the books Hall analyzed and found that The Godfather, The Dead Zone, and The Hunt for Red October all relied heavily in the opening chapters on explaining the characters' pasts.

On the other hand, what we normally think of as "good writing," - elegant sentences and flowing prose - is not a requirement for bestseller superstardom.

So, as you may have suspected, there's no list of elements that can either describe all bestsellers or can lead you to bestsellerdom. Hit Lit will probably not make you a better or a more successful writer. However, analyzing the books along with Hall and his students may make you a better reader as you consider just what it is you like about certain favorites.

Have you ever wondered why certain books make it onto bestseller lists, or even more so, why some books will rank high in sales for decades? In Hit Lit James W. Hall takes a closer look at twelve such novels from the last century, presenting the common features which propelled them into the realms of bestsellers.
Looking at the selection of American bestsellers of the 20th century, from "Gone with the Wind" to "The Da Vinci Code" the selected books seem to be a rather wild mix and I was curious to find out what they could possibly have in common and how these similarities make them some of the most read novels of our time. From the rather obvious such as being unputdownable fast paced tales with contentious topics and colossal characters doing great things, to the not quite as conspicuous such as the importance of geography, religion and sexual encounters this was a both surprising and insightful read.
Engrossing, informative, and accessible, which shouldn't be taken for granted when it comes to authors dissecting literature, this is a truly fascinating view on the bestseller-making parts bestsellers have in common - though ultimately a great book will always be more than its individual parts. Admittedly I would have loved a broader approach to the topic and not just the focus on American bestsellers, then again maybe such a book is already on the author's to-do list. I certainly wouldn't mind!
In short: Revelatory journey into the world of bestsellers!

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the NetGalley book review program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

I looked forward to this book -- what novelist wouldn't want to learn the secrets of building a bestseller from a lit prof who doubles as a successful commercial novelist? But I found the book disappointing on a number of levels. The first disappointment was that I found very little new in this book -- no lightbulb over the head insights that prompted me to say, "Ah, hah! That's how it's done." Many good books have covered the same ground. The second disappointment was the selection of bestsellers reviewed -- the only 21st century novel included was published in 2003 and the rest -- with the exception of a 1991 title -- were published from the 1930s to the 1980s. All of those books were bonafide bestsellers in their day but taken as a whole bear very little resemblance to the current bestseller list. The third disappointment was Hall's failure to grapple with genre in any way. While bestsellers tend to transcend genre, most commercial novels fall into one of the standard genres -- romance, thriller, mystery, fantasy, horror, etc. -- and to ignore how they fit into the needs of their category leaves out a large part of the story of their success. Finally, the organization of the book is irritating -- twelve chapters based on the twelve key elements that all twelve bestsellers demonstrate, with each chapter broken into many smaller, subheaded parts. Hall adds in a short, summing up chapter -- a recap -- that is the most useful page in the book. But if this book is written for fiction writers, the structure makes it difficult to extract the significance for practical purposes. And if this book is written for readers, they're treated to a choppy structure which leaves them feeling that they've been exposed to lots of potentially interesting information but not the important thread that would tie all those insights together.