Film and music stars peddle booze, beauty, and everything in between.
But the hottest status symbol touted (and toted) by the modern-day it girl? A book.
It all started with Oprah Winfrey, the OG of the buzzy celebrity book club. She launched Oprah’s Book Club on her eponymous talk show in 1996 and has since inspired a movement of celebrities sharing their love of reading with fans. Long gone are the days of zooming in on a paparazzi photo to discover what your favorite star is reading. Just check their Instagram!
While naysayers might roll their eyes at another celebrity hopping on the book club bandwagon, a recent study conducted by iScience found that the proportion of the US population who read for pleasure on an average day declined over the last 20 years. From highs of 28% in 2004 to lows of 16% in 2023, the study indicates a relative decrease of 3% per year.
For bibliophiles, these numbers are alarming. For avid readers with serious social capital? It’s a call to action.
Case in point: Reese Witherspoon was sick of the lack of female representation in stories that got the book-to-screen treatment. Natalie Portman believes becoming immersed in a story is a clear path toward empathy. Dua Lipa noticed the dwindling interest in libraries and wanted to reinvigorate discussions around reading. And Winfrey may have captured the collective intention of these celebrity book clubs best when she launched her own, saying, “I want to get the whole country reading again.”
From Oscar-winning actors to morning news hosts and Grammy-winning pop stars, here are the celebrity book clubs that are inspiring their fans to read.
Oprah’s Book Club
You get a book! You get a book. You get a book! “The Oprah Show” garnered around 48 million viewers weekly in the height of its popularity, and since Winfrey launched her groundbreaking book club in 1996, books selected for the monthly club have sold a combined 55 million copies.
Winfrey called the moment she launched her book club one of her all-time favorite moments on television. “When I was growing up, books were my friends. When I didn’t have friends, I had books,” she said on the episode that unleashed a movement. “I think that books open windows to the world for all of us.”
Winfrey explained that she read “Deep End of the Ocean” by first-time novelist Jacquelyn Mitchard, and she loved it so much that she wanted to share it with her millions of viewers. “Those of you who haven’t been reading, I think books are important. So this is what we’re going to do: Y’all are going to have to buy it … you get one month, then we’ll meet back here in a month and we’ll talk about the book, just like they do in the reading clubs. Isn’t that exciting? I love it!”
As of this month, Winfrey has featured 118 monthly picks across nearly three decades and the vast majority of her picks shoot to best-seller status. Some of the books have stirred up headline-making controversies and scandals (Remember “A Million Little Pieces” by James Frey?) and some have been adapted into Oscar-winning films. Not only has Oprah’s Book Club inspired millions to rush out to their local bookshops, it’s giving readers plenty of juicy book gossip to discuss. (Remember “The Corrections” contretemps with Jonathan Franzen?)
Reese’s Book Club
Reese Witherspoon is another top tastemaker with an immensely wide-reaching influence. In June 2017, she launched her book club, Reese’s Book Club, in conjunction with her production company, Hello Sunshine. She selects a book each month that centers on stories about women, and she takes approximately 2-3 of those books to the screen each year.
The catalyst for launching such a venture? She said she was sick of getting lousy scripts. She told Graham Norton earlier this year that a script came across her desk around 2013 that was especially negative toward women. “I called my agent, and I said, ‘This is the worst script I’ve ever read, and I’m not doing it.’ And she said, ‘Every actress in Hollywood wants to do this part.’ And I thought, Okay, well, if this is how bad the parts are for people who are really thriving in an industry, I gotta do better.”
“I complained about it for a long time, and then I realized complaining doesn’t help. And then I was like, ‘What am I gonna do about it?’ So I put my own money into a company, and I bought the first three books.”
The books: “Gone Girl,” by Gillian Flynn, “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed and “Big Little Lies” by Liane Moriarty. The venture has nabbed multiple Oscar nominations and eight Emmy Awards, launched many of the buzziest, yellow-sticker-donning bestsellers, and brought numerous stories about the female experience to the forefront of popular culture.
Belletrist
Emma Roberts and her bestie, Karah Preiss, launched Belletrist in 2017 after years of exchanging book recommendations via text and phone chats. “We bonded over a shared love of books and dark jokes,” Roberts told BookClub in 2021. “What are other ways we can reclaim our power that don’t involve murder?”
“What is Bellatrist? In French, the rough translation is somebody who writes beautiful letters or words,” Preiss added. “In English, it’s our book club.”
Roberts told Vogue in 2020 that Joan Didion agreed to be the Book Club’s first author interview. “It made us feel special, for her to support two young women who are just trying to share stories with the world, and it gave us a solid foundation to start our community with.”
Belletrist shares monthly book club picks, offers a subscription service through a collaboration with online bookseller Tertulia, and hosts online discussions with members, as well as author interviews. Recent book club picks include “Finding Grace” by Loretta Rothschild, “How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter’s Memoir,” by Molly Jong-Fast and “Notes on Infinity: A Novel,” by Austin Taylor.
Service95 Book Club by Dua Lipa
“If you’re anything like me, books aren’t just something that you read and put down. They stay with you. They’re passports, mirrors, escape routes, secret maps for finding yourself or getting completely lost in the best way,” Dua Lipa said in a YouTube video introducing her Service95 book club podcast.
Every month since the Service95 book club’s inception in June 2023, Lipa has introduced members to a hand-selected book that made the pop star “laugh out loud, cry in public, rethink something that I thought I knew or just stayed with me long after the last page.” She hosts the authors on her video podcast to discuss their work, and the guests have included National Book Award winner Patti Smith, “On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous” author Ocean Vuong, Pulitzer Prize winner Percival Everett, and more.
Lipa’s admiration for storytellers is clearly mutual: celebrated authors Min Jin Lee, Hernan Diaz, Emma Cline, Douglas Stuart and Jennifer Clement showed up to dance the night away at Lipa’s Radical Optimism tour stop at Madison Square Garden this month.
The “Levitating” hitmaker recently visited a reading group at HMP Downview, a women’s prison in Surrey, England, as part of the Booker Prize Foundation’s Books Unlocked program.
She told Harper’s BAZAAR last month that the club was discussing “Shuggie Bain,” by Douglas Stuart, which was also the first monthly pick for Service95. “There was also one lady in there that I think about often, and she was about 52 years old or something, and she said, ‘Oh, had I maybe read books sooner in my life, maybe I wouldn’t be here, because reading books has really made me understand people and humans and emotions.’ Reading opens you up to the world. And it makes the world so much smaller.”
Between Two Books
Florence Welch of the chart-topping rock band Florence & The Machine, insists she didn’t start her book club Between Two Books. During a 2022 appearance on BBC One, she said it was her fans who launched the club. “Ten years ago, the Florence & The Machine community started a Twitter thread asking why I didn’t have a book club. So they started it, and came up with a name, and I just joined in, ‘I’d love to start a book club.’”
Welch started recommending books immediately, and in 2012, Between Two Books (a play on the group’s hit song “Between Two Lungs“) was born. According to the website, the club has grown into a vibrant online community, still led by original members, Kate and Leah, along with Florence, Maria and Terri-Jane.
The club also regularly features guest recommendations from artists, writers, musicians and directors such as Greta Gerwig, Nick Cave, Fiona Apple and Sally Rooney. The discussions take place across social media where the club features readings and Q&As with authors. Recent book club picks include “There Are Rivers In The Sky” by Elif Shafak, “Parable of the Sower” by Octavia Butler and “Never Let Me Go” by Kazuo Ishiguro.
Noname Book Club
Rapper Noname’s international book club originated in a similar way as Between Two Books: through Twitter. The New York Times reported that in July 2019, the rapper posted a photo of the essay collection, “Jackson Rising: The Struggle for Economic Democracy and Black Self‑Determination in Jackson, Mississippi,” and a Twitter fan responded with a photo of the same book and a suggestion that they swap notes.
Shortly after that exchange, Noname Book Club was born. Each month, the club spotlights one book written by a Black author. “We believe building community through political education is crucial for our liberation,” reads Noname’s mission statement.
Since the club’s founding in 2019, they’ve launched 20 book club chapters across the United States and several international chapters in London, Lagos, Accra, Toronto and Nairobi. In April 2021, Noname expanded the club’s prison chapters and sent books to 1500 incarcerated members of the club. One especially cool aspect of Noname’s book club is that members of various chapters around the world host in-person meetups to discuss the literature.
“I want people to think radically,” the rapper told the NYT. Recent book club picks include “Sister Outsider” by Audre Lorde, “Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature” by Ngugi wa Thiong’o and “Krik? Krak!” by Edwidge Danticat.
Read with Jenna
Jenna Bush Hager has become a household name through her political lineage and more than 16 years as a correspondent and anchor on NBC’s “The Today Show,” most recently, “Today with Jenna & Friends.” While both her father and grandfather were American presidents, her mother (former first lady Laura Bush) and both of her grandmothers were librarians.
She told People magazine earlier this year that her grandmothers didn’t mess around when it came to the importance of reading, “I mean, my grandmother, Barbara Bush, had a sewn, needle-pointed pillow on her couch that said, ‘Reading is sexy.’ Which I’ve remade and put on my couch.”
Naturally, Bush Hager would go on to launch a book club, Read with Jenna, in 2019 through “The Today Show.” Bush Hager told Publishers’ Weekly that the club originated after a dare from Libby Leist, EVP of Today and lifestyle at NBC Universal. “She had seen two conflicting articles, one of which said that people were reading more than ever, and the other saying that my generation wasn’t reading,” Bush Hager told the outlet. “I was like, ‘I’m telling you, we’re reading more, and people still love to read. So let me start a book club and see how it goes.’ And the first book, ‘The Last Romantics’ by Tara Conklin, shot up on Amazon from basically oblivion to number two.”
Since the club’s inception, Read with Jenna has spotlighted more than 75 books, all of which Bush Hager has personally chosen. Recent book club picks include “Buckeye” by Patrick Ryan, “My Other Heart” by Emma Nanami Strenner and “Happy Wife” by Meredith Lavender and Kendall Shores.
TeaTime Book Club
Much like Reese Witherspoon, Dakota Johnson launched the TeaTime Book Club in tandem with her production company, TeaTime Pictures, which she co-founded with former Netflix development executive Ro Donnelly. The venture, which launched in 2024, was inspired by Johnson’s search for stories to develop into films and TV shows, and features monthly book club picks that aim to spotlight debut writers and underrepresented stories. As for her favorite books, she admits she’s a bit of a “book snob” and especially enjoys literary fiction.
The “Materialists” star told Bustle last year that TeaTime isn’t exactly like the other celebrity book clubs. “I’ve found in book clubs that you’re just kind of on your own. You watch someone like me have a conversation with the author, but I don’t feel invested in that. I’m not very good at Instagram, and I am constantly trying to figure it out, but the more I’ve learned and seen, something like this is really needed. People need to deep dive into knowledge about specific things rather than talking about what f— face serum they’re using and thinking that that’s the most important thing in the world.”
Rather than host author Q&As, Johnson likes to post “deep dive” lists on Instagram for each of the club’s monthly picks, which include adjacent books, watch lists, and even playlists curated by authors, which Johnson also shares via Spotify. Recent TeaTime picks include “The Dilemmas of Working Women,” by Fumio Yamamoto, “Make Your Way Home” by Carrie R. Moore and “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams.
Nat’s Book Club
Natalie Portman launched her Instagram-exclusive book club, Nat’s Book Club, in 2021. While the Oscar-winning actor has a more low-key approach to the celebrity book club — her club operates sans fancy stickers, collaborations with booksellers, etc. — her mission reflects those of her peers in the A-list literati.
“I believe that reading books is one of the first ways we start practicing empathy,” a note from Portman reads on the club’s website. “We feel for characters in stories as we might for ourselves or our own friends. Whenever we imagine someone else’s life — their hopes and fears, their feelings and thoughts — we are practicing empathy. I try to find books that deepen our understanding of ourselves and of the world around us. Seeing yourself reflected in characters can be just as eye-opening as empathizing with a character who you might not readily identify with. At the same time, I also believe non-fiction has an important role in shaping our culture and thinking.”
Portman posts a selfie with her book club pick each month, passages from the monthly selection, as well as interviews with authors via the club’s Instagram. Recent book club picks include “No Straight Road Takes You There” by Rebecca Solnit, “A Different Kind of Power” by Jacinda Ardern and “The English Understand Wool” by Helen DeWitt.
Library Science
Kaia Gerber launched her book club, Library Science, alongside former Vanity Fair contributor Alyssa Reeder. According to the book club’s website, the project “aims to highlight books that aren’t on the typical bestseller lists in order to better support debut writers, new voices, and overlooked / underrepresented stories.” The club hosts conversations both online and at in-person events.
“I’ve been an avid reader pretty much my whole life,” Gerber told the Associated Press last year. “And during the pandemic, I started an online book club conversation on Instagram, and then it grew from there. I started to foster this incredible community of readers and authors, and now it has its own platform. I feel so fortunate that I get to have these incredible conversations with authors that I admire so much, and I think it’s opened up the conversation to some big topics that, you know, sometimes are hard to broach … I’m so grateful anytime someone says they read a book that I recommended, it’s like the highest compliment that someone can give me.”
The club explores works of fiction, translations, essays, plays, and poetry, with a focus on reading “that could provoke larger conversations around sex, love, girlhood, queerness, grief, addiction, beauty, being.”
The club’s aim is to encourage more people to discuss literature. And Gerber, the daughter of supermodel Cindy Crawford and a model herself, doesn’t mince words if people come to the Library Science comment section to stray from the discussion of books: “The dichotomy of appearance-based comments under a video of two women having an in-depth conversation about being perceived and projected onto the world? the irony is not lost on me. . . if you viewed women as more than just a physical vessel for your own projections, you could get something valuable out of a conversation like this. thank you for validating my point, and please rewatch this clip with the volume turned all the way up.”
Recent book club picks include “The Post-Office Girl” by Stefan Zweig (translated from German by Joel Rotenberg), “Bonjour Tristesse” by Francoise Sagan and “Set My Heart on Fire” by Izumi Suzuki.
Source: Berkshire mont