The most talked-about book in America, which raises the specter that women who sacrifice families for careers might wake up childless at 45, is hardly selling at all.

Babbitt was published in September of 1922, and it became the most talked-about book of the year.

His The New Shostakovich was one of the most talked-about classical books of the 1990s.

The result is the most talked-about book in years in the capital, "All These Years," an instant best seller by Raj Thapar, a member of the city's social elite.

The most talked-about book of 1986, James Clavell's "Whirlwind," finished No. 5 on the hard-cover fiction list, a respectable showing since it has been in bookstores only about two months.

This work, which sought to strip Christianity of its supernatural trappings and present Jesus as 'an incomparable man', was perhaps the single most talked-about book of its age.

Nor did he have the most talked-about book of the fair, which was "The Piano Tuner" by Daniel Philippe Mason, to be published by Knopf.

But the most talked-about book at the convention was Amy Tan's "The Kitchen God's Wife," her second novel, which is to be published later this year by the Putnam Berkley Group.

In 1949, after being rejected by several American publishers and taken up by an English house, "The Sheltering Sky" became a talked-about book in both countries.

And at the time, this was the most talked-about book in Washington.