Oprah picks "Love in the Time of Cholera" for readers

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oprah Winfrey picked "Love in the Time of Cholera" as her next book club selection on Friday, the second time she has chosen a novel by Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

For several years Winfrey has been selecting books for her global TV audience to read, with the publicity pulling some obscure works onto bestseller lists and fueling sales.

Her latest choice comes ahead of the November release of a film adaptation of the book starring Spanish actor Javier Bardem and American actor Benjamin Bratt.

"This is one of the greatest love stories I have ever read. It's a captivating story about a passionate but troubled love affair that takes place over the course of 50 years," Oprah wrote on her Web site after announcing the selection on her daytime talk show.

"It is so beautifully written that it really takes you to another place in time and will make you ask yourself -- how long could you, or would you, wait for love?"

In 2004, she chose "One Hundred Years of Solitude," Colombian-born Garcia Marquez's most famous book from 1967, for her book club.

Garcia Marquez, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982, released "Love in the Time of Cholera" in 1985. The book is published by Vintage Books, a Random House imprint.