Since Oprah’s first book club pick in 1996, we have been reading as the celebrities do—falling in love with, or hating, characters with our fellow book club readers. Book clubs offer an opportunity to be in community with others, even if we’re not together in person.
Other celebrities who love to read have started book clubs, and even magazines are getting in on the action! Enjoy these summer picks from well-established and new celebrity book clubs.
Please note: Many of these books are brand-new releases. We’ve ordered extra copies, but if you’re waiting on hold, be sure to check out the new materials shelves at the Maze and Dole branches and Hot Picks at the Main Library (these copies can’t be placed on hold or renewed). If the title is listed as available in the catalog, head over and pick up your next read before someone snatches it up!
Read with the stars
Take What You Can by Naima Coster
Who’s reading it? Good Morning America Book Club
Description: Val and Milly fell in love with France at the same time they fell in love with each other and became immediate best friends. Then, they bonded as the only Black students on a study-abroad trip. Now they are in their thirties, each married and with a baby girl on the way. When Milly suggests Val move to New York so they can raise their daughters together after a decade apart, it’s a resounding yes. Weaving between Brooklyn brownstones and the glittering beaches of southern France, Take What You Can is a dazzling novel exploring what it means to be a mother when you have none, a sister without blood ties, and a woman in pursuit of the life she wants. With her signature sharply observed prose, Naima Coster illustrates how to be—and to stay—someone’s person through all phases of life.
The Simp by Roshan Sethi
Who’s reading it? The Audacious Book Club from Roxane Gay
Description: A razor-sharp novel about the rise and fall of an unemployed actor who lands the greatest role of his life when he’s hired as a personal assistant to an absurd Hollywood family.
The Wild Beneath by Kelly Anderson
Who’s reading it? Reese’s Book Club from Reese Witherspoon
Description: A fierce, haunting story of one woman caught between her first love and a mysterious stranger who upends everything—and the two worlds that won’t let her go.
Sunlight Finds You by Laura Moriarty
Who is reading it? Read with Jenna from Jenna Bush Hager
Description: A forbidden love blows open the world of a teenage girl, altering the trajectory of her life. A layered and propulsive love story set in the past, but with much to say about our present, Sunlight Finds You is ultimately about extending forgiveness—for ourselves, and for others—and about refusing to settle for a life that is less than full.
Beginning, Middle, End by Valeria Luiselli
Who is reading it? TeaTime Pictures from Dakota Johnson
Description: This story begins when a mother and her daughter take off on a trip. It is a summer of rapidly changing winds, volcanic rumbles, and sudden tempests. They’ve landed in Sicily, near the ancient ruins where the mother’s grandmother worked long ago on an archaeological dig. The narrator’s marriage has collapsed, her mother is losing her memory, and her daughter is on the threshold of adolescence, starting to ask difficult questions and form complex memories. How do you begin again? the narrator wonders, pondering her family line. How do you begin again if you got the beginning wrong?
London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe
Who is reading it? New York Times Book Review Book Club
Description: A powerfully compelling account of a family devastated by the apparent suicide of their nineteen year-old son, only to discover he had created a separate identity which drew him into the dangerous international criminal underworld underlying London’s glittering surface.
Girl’s Girl by Sonia Feldman
Who is reading it? Belletrist from Emma Roberts and Karah Preiss
Description: One summer shatters the balance between three best friends, forcing them to confront the line between friendship and attraction.
Night Objects by Eli Raphael
Who is reading it? Katie Couric’s Book Club from Katie Couric
Description: This suspenseful novel transports readers to the windswept coast of Washington State and a boarding school steeped in privilege and deadly secrets–a remarkable story of grief, power, and the dangerous price of belonging.
Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash
Who is reading it? Service95 Book Club from Dua Lipa
Description: The Flynn family is coming undone. Catherine and Bud’s open marriage has reached its breaking point as their daughters spiral in their own chaotic orbits: Abigail, the eldest, is dating a man in his twenties nicknamed War Crime Wes; Louise, the middle child, maintains a secret correspondence with an online terrorist; the brilliant youngest, Harper, is being sent to wilderness reform camp due to her insistence that someone—or something—is monitoring the town’s citizens. Rippling with humor, warmth, and style, Lost Lambs is a new vision of the charms and pitfalls of family dysfunction.