Price: $9.06 List: $12.95 You save: 30% New - Trade Paper More about this book More books by Jean-Philippe Toussaint

Publisher Comments:
The amusingly odd protagonist and narrator of Jean-Philippe Toussaint's novel is an academic on sabbatical in Berlin to work on his book about Titian. With his research completed, all he has left to do is sit down and write. Unfortunately, he can't decide how to refer to his subject, so instead he starts watching TV continuously, until one day he decides to renounce the most addictive of twentieth-century inventions. As he spends his summer still not writing his book, he is haunted by TV, from the video surveillance screens in a museum to a moment when it seems everyone in Berlin is tuned in to Baywatch. One of Toussaint?s funniest antiheroes, the protagonist of Television turns daily occurrences into an entertaining reflection on society and the influence of television on our lives.

Reviews:
"[A] highly original commentary on modern society....This inventive tale is recommended." Library Journal

"Ever so slightly redundant and attenuated, but most readers will be charmed nonetheless. Very entertaining indeed." Kirkus Reviews

"Toussaint is an original and significant writer, whose fiction can be as engaging as it is surprising." Times Literary Supplement (U.K.)

About the Litblog Co-op
The Litblog Co-op unites twenty-one leading literary weblogs for the purpose of drawing attention to the best of contemporary fiction, authors and presses that are struggling to be noticed in a flooded marketplace.

Participating bloggers will discuss quarterly selections at the LBC website, as well as on their own blogs, with each member bringing their own unique perspective and ideas to coverage of the book.

Participating bloggers and their favorite independent booksellers:

The History of Love
by Nicole Krauss

• Broken for You by Stephanie Kallos
• Be More Chill by Ned Vizzini
• A Window Across the River by Brian Morton
• Heir to the Glimmering World by Cynthia Ozick
• The Sleeping Father by Matthew Sharpe
• The Way the Crow Flies by Ann-Marie MacDonald
• The Known World by Edward P. Jones
• The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard
• The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
• Shadow Baby by Alison McGhee
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
• The Dogs of Babel by Carolyn Parkhurst
• Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by Zz Packer
• Nine Horses by Billy Collins
• Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros
• The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
• Crow Lake by Mary Lawson
• Paradise Alley by Kevin Baker
• The Clothes They Stood Up in: And, the Lady in the Van by Alan Bennett
• Raising Fences: A Black Man's Love Story by Michael Datcher
• A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland Indiana by Haven Kimmel
• You Are Not a Stranger Here by Adam Haslett
• The Emperor of Ocean Park by Stephen L. Carter

Fasting, Feasting
by Anita Desai

• When the Lion Feeds by Wilbur Smith
• Atonement by Ian McEwan
• White Teeth by Zadie Smith
• Original Sin by P. D. James
• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
• The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
• The Commitments by Roddy Doyle
• Fasting, Feasting by Anita Desai
• My Michael by Amos Oz
• Red Dust by Gillian Slovo
• Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett
• Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
• The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer
• Possession by A. S. Byatt
• Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey
• Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth
• A House for Mr. Biswas by V. S. Naipaul
• House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
• Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith
• The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
• House for Mr Biswas by V. S. Naipaul
• A Judgement in Stone by Ruth Rendell
• Wild Swans by Jung Chang
• The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett
• The Wild Swans by Jung Chang
• The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing
• The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
• The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
• The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi
• The Famished Road by Ben Okri
• The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
• Money by Martin Amis
• Lake Wobegon Days by Garrison Keillor

Balance of Power
by Richard North Patterson

• Mystic River by Dennis Lehane
• Lucia, Lucia by Adriana Trigiani
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J. K. Rowling
• The New Work of Dogs: Tending to Life, Love, and Family in a Changing World by Jon Katz
• Jarhead by Anthony Swofford
• The Hours by Michael Cunningham
  Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
• Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy by Jane Leavy
• I Don't Know How She Does It:The Life of Kate Reddy, Working Mother by Allison Pearson
• Paradise Alley by Kevin Baker
• Reversible Errors by Scott Turow
• Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
• Bad Boy Brawly Brown by Walter Mosley
• Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand
• Empire Falls by Richard Russo

Someone Not Really Her Mother
by Harriet Scott Chessman

• We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
• Life of Pi by Yann Martel
• A Vineyard Killing by Philip R. Craig
• Samaritan by Richard Price
• The Traveler's Gift: Seven Decisions That Determine Personal Success by Andy Andrews
• What Should I Do with My Life by Po Bronson
• dot.bomb: My Days and Nights at an Internet Goliath by J. David Kuo
• The Last Girls by Lee Smith
• Dress Codes: Of Three Girlhoods -- My Mother's,My Father's and Mine by Noelle Howey
• The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
• Three Junes by Julia Glass
• The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
• Enemy Women by Paulette Jiles
• The Dive from Clausen’s Pier by Ann Packer

Night
by Elie Wiesel
PAST TITLES

• A Million Little Pieces by James Frey
• As I Lay Dying; The Sound and the Fury; and Light in August by William Faulkner
• The Good Earth by Pearl Buck
• The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
• East of Eden by John Steinbeck

more selections from Oprah's Book Club