Oprah Hearing From Angry Book Club Members

The bookworm has turned.

A year after starting a publishing phenomenon that has sent eight books to the top of the best-seller lists, Oprah Winfrey has angered some of her most faithful book club members by giving short shrift to the latest selection, “Songs In Ordinary Time” by Mary McGarry Morris.

“Bring back MMM!” is the rallying cry in the e-mail and online posts of a small but passionate band of readers who bonded over the summer while sharing their thoughts on the 740-page novel. With questions about everything from “Songs”’ liturgically inspired title to its ambiguous ending, they say they had looked forward to the show discussing the book for weeks.

But when last Monday came, Winfrey spent most of the time celebrating the book club’s first anniversary by asking celebrities such as Sylvester Stallone and Tony Danza about their favorite books. She devoted less than five minutes to “Songs.”

This prompted a rash of online complaints, the first really negative reviews for the book club, which has impressed skeptical critics with the quality of its selections and earned Winfrey the Literary Marketplace “Person of the Year.”

Winfrey quickly posted an apology for the show, but it did little to quell the complaints. Audrey Pass of Harpo, Winfrey’s Chicago-based production company, noted last week: “We will be sensitive to the fact that viewers look forward to an extended discussion of the book.”

Winfrey’s apology, posted Tuesday night, read in part: “You are absolutely right. We decided to have a big Book Club Anniversary celebration and then got so excited about that we overlooked the summer book discussion. With ‘Songs’ being such a rich and complicated book, we were also at a loss to do it justice.”

Those meant-to-be soothing words proved to be gasoline on the fire.

Meanwhile, the author can count on becoming a millionaire thanks to royalties. (“What were you doing when I called you?” was reportedly the only on-air question from Winfrey to Morris, which also outraged the posters.)

For Viking-Penguin, Morris’ publishers, the situation is a delicate one. After all, Winfrey essentially rescued a literary novel that received mixed reviews when it was published in 1995 and transformed it into a best seller. Efforts to reach Morris through her publisher were unsuccessful, and Viking had no comment.