By Collection Management Librarian Dontaná
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 January 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
Homeseeking by Karissa Chen
Who's reading it? Good Morning America Book Club
Description: Separated by war and reunited after 60 years, Haiwen and Suchi navigate decades of love, loss, and survival across continents, as their shared past clashes with their hopes for a second chance at life.
Private Rites by Julia Armfield
Who's reading it? The Audacious Book Club from Roxane Gay
Description: Sisters Isla, Irene, and Agnes have not spoken in some time when their father, an architect as cruel as he was revered, dies. In the grand glass house they grew up in, their father’s most famous creation, the sisters sort through the secrets and memories he left behind, until a revelation in his will shatters their fragile bond. But something even more sinister might be unfolding, something related to their mother’s long-ago disappearance and the strangers who have always seemed unusually interested in the sisters’ lives.
The Three Lives of Cate Kay by Kate Fagan
Who's reading it? Reese's Book Club from Reese Witherspoon
Description: Cate Kay, a reclusive bestselling author, has concealed her identity for years, but when a devastating tragedy from her past resurfaces, she’s forced to confront the secrets that derailed her dreams and return to the place she’s been running from.
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk
Who's reading it? Service95 from Dua Lipa
Description: When her neighbor turns up dead, and then other bodies turn up under strange circumstances, Janine, a recluse in a remote Polish village who prefers the company of animals over humans, inserts herself into the investigation, certain she knows whodunit.
The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus by Emma Knight
Who is reading it? Read with Jenna from Jenna Bush Hager
Description: Arriving at the University of Edinburgh for her first term, Pen knows her divorced parents back in Canada are hiding something. She believes she'll find the answer in Scotland, where a friend of her father's—the famous writer Lord Lennox—lives. When she is invited to spend the weekend at Lord Lennox's centuries-old estate with his family, Pen begins to unravel her parents' secret, just as she's falling in love for the first time.
Saving Time: Discovering Life Beyond the Clock by Jenny Odell
Who is reading it? Nat's Book Club from Natalie Portman
Description: In this thought-provoking, deeply hopeful reframing of time, the author takes us on a journey through other temporal habitats, urging us to become stewards of different rhythms of life, to imagine an existence, identity, and source of meaning outside the world of work and profit.
How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund? by Anna Montague
Who is reading it? The Pants Pod Book Club from Leisha Hailey and Kate Moennig
Description: Magda, a therapist grieving her best friend, embarks on a cross-country road trip with her friend's ashes, confronting her past and discovering new possibilities for her life and identity in her seventies.
About Dontaná
Dontaná is a Collection Management Librarian who was born with an unending reading list. She is almost always reading two books simultaneously and is easily distracted by cool covers.
