PW Daily's Charlotte Abbott reports that the latest selection of Oprah's Book Club is MIDDLESEX by Jeffrey Eugenides. Word that this novel would be Oprah's next pick trickled out last weekend, as hundreds of booksellers gathered at Book Expo America. Many received their shipments of the $15 paperback last month, and were warned by Picador not to open their cartons until after today's official announcement on today's show, which also features Cormac McCarthy's first television appearance.

Ron notes that we're getting better at figuring Oprah out; remember our mid-May speculation?

"So that takes us back to the $15 Picador paperbacks, among which we've got Trance (strong possibilities), I Am Charlotte Simmons (heaven help us), Middlesex (left-field, but these days that'd be par for Oprah's course), The Red Tent (actually $14.95, but perfect for the original book club), and The Corrections (I'm just saying!)."

No wonder they started getting panicky in Chicago when one of those authors took himself out of the running... That isn't to say we can't improve; even with the answer staring him in the face, Ron still believed it was going to be Marilynne Robinson's Gilead.