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Two Books at a Time: August 2020 Celebrity Book Club Picks

More book clubs are selecting a second book for the month as some continue their promise of reading works by authors of color in the wake of the latest anti-racism protests.

AMERIE’S BOOK CLUB

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

“Jones is unflinching in his exploration of vengeance and justice, the realities of living and growing up Native today, as well as community and where tradition fits into the modern world,” Amerie wrote on the book club’s Instagram profile. “At turns poignant and difficult to digest, I found the story brimming with despair, anger, and, despite everything, hope.”

BELLETRIST BOOK CLUB

Luster by Raven Leilani

Blue Ticket by Sophie Mackintosh

Actress Emma Roberts’ book club with Karah Preiss have taken the two-book route this month for the first time.

“Loving #luster 💖 are you?” Emma shared on Instagram in a selfie with the book.

GMA BOOK CLUB

The Lions of Fifth Avenue by Fiona Davis

“It’s set at the New York Public Library and it’s about a family that lives in an apartment deep inside the building, an apartment that actually existed,” the author told Good Morning America. “It’s about the magic of the written word and the power of women’s voices, and it’s dedicated to some of my favorite people: librarians.”

KAIA GERBER’S BOOK CLUB

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

Teen supermodel Kaia Gerber selects several books throughout the month, and she has chosen a summer book club favorite. She also hosted author Brit Bennett on Instagram Live.

NONAME BOOK CLUB

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination by Toni Morrison

Indie rapper Noname is celebrating the first anniversary of her book club that focuses on social science books for readers of color. This month the book club made its two selections: The Vanishing Half from Noname and Playing in the Dark as the homie pick.

OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB

Caste by Isabel Wilkerson

“It explains why we are where we are in terms of racial injustice and inequality,” Oprah said on her book club website, “and it show us how to rebuild a world in which all are truly equal and free.”

READ WITH JENNA – TODAY SHOW BOOK CLUB

The Comeback by Ella Berman

Here For It by R. Eric Thomas

Jenna Bush Hager, Today Show correspondent and presidential daughter, selected two books for August for the first time in the 2-year-old book club’s history.

“This beautifully written and compulsively readable book broke me from my pandemic blockage,” she said of The Comeback on Instagram.

Jenna partnered with Noelle Santos, the owner of The Bronx-based indie bookstore The Lit Bar, to pick Here For It.

“I just loved how she was bringing a new face to literature and I loved her passion for it,” Jenna said about Noelle in Today.

REESE’S BOOK CLUB

Everything Inside by Edwidge Danticat

You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson

Recently Emmy-nominated producer for the Hulu miniseries based on the novel Little Fires Everywhere, Reese Witherspoon named the latest short story collection by Edwidge Danticat as the monthly pick for her book club.

“#EverythingInside is a collection of short stories anchored in Haitian culture about love, love loss and love of country,” the book club posted on Instagram. “#EdwidgeDanticat encourages you to find rays of hope in each story and to take moments in between to let the narratives sink in.⁠”

Reese’s Book Club also announced last week its young adult version, which chose You Should See Me in a Crown as its inaugural selection. Now, the book club will choose a novel for adult readers and another novel for the YA audience each month.

“I’ve been reading so many incredible, diverse stories in the YA genre and can’t wait to share them with you each month as an additional pick,” Reese said in the announcement of Reese’s Book Club YA.

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Beach Reads, Memoirs Dominate the Summer: July 2020 Celebrity Book Club Picks

With the impact of the anti-Black racism protests last month, some of the celebrity-founded book clubs kept the focus on Black stories as others chose the top books of the summer including reads perfect for the beach (if it’s open) and texts exploring gender and sexual identity.

AMERIE’S BOOK CLUB

You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat

The debut novel features a Palestinian American girl who is yelled at by a group of men for showing her legs on a trip to Bethlehem. The experience eventually allows her to tell her mother she’s queer as she moves to different spaces to find her true self.

“I rooted for her and hurt for her as she tried to find her way through one bad decision after another,” Amerie wrote on Instagram. “The main character, whose name is never revealed, stayed with me long after I closed the book, as did her hope for yet another shot at love.”

BELLETRIST BOOK CLUB

The Dragons, The Giant, The Women: A Memoir by Wayétu Moore

The author of She Would Be King and founder of nonprofit One Moore Book has a new memoir about her experience living through the civil war in Liberia. At five years old, she’s waiting to be reunited with her mother, who’s studying in New York, then her world is turned upside down with the war. Her family flees on foot from their home and get smuggled across the border of Sierra Leone, where they get a chance to fly to the U.S.

Belletrist, founded by actress Emma Roberts and producer Karah Preiss, also chose the Black woman-owned Semicolon Bookstore in Chicago as its indie bookstore of the month.

GMA BOOK CLUB

Sex and Vanity by Kevin Kwan

The Crazy Rich Asians series creator’s new book takes place on the island of Capri with a half-Chinese, half-White woman trying to fall for the well-off White man her family likes while avoiding another man, who is Chinese, she keeps suppressing her feelings for.

“It’s a summer escape full of travel, food, fun and fashion,” Kevin told Good Morning America. “The outrageous characters will make your crazy families seem almost normal.”

KAIA GERBER’S BOOK CLUB

Darling Days: A Memoir by iO Tillett Wright

Born female, the author comes of age in downtown New York with a young widowed mother and adopts the persona of a boy amid the 1980s “intersection of punk, poverty, heroin, and art.”
“In talking to him about his experience publishing this book, he taught me that writers who happen to be queer too often are dismissed as ‘queer writers’ and their books, regardless of the topics they cover, end up exclusively stocked on ‘LGBT author’ shelves,” Kaia wrote in an Instagram post. “Darling Days goes far beyond this—it is a story about neglect, creativity, internalized homophobia, and the beauty you can make out of pain. it is a New York story of growing up and out of the life you are born into.” 

NONAME’S BOOK CLUB

Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Y. Davis

Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex by Eric A. Stanley and Nat Smith

Rapper Noname picks Are Prisons Obsolete?, a book that calls for the abolition of prisons and how it will benefit society as a whole. The homie pick, Captive Genders, comes from Che Gossett. It studies trans and gender-queer people in prison with the most recent version including a foreword from CeCe MacDonald, who was imprisoned for killing a transphobic attacker, and an essay by Chelsea Manning, the former U.S. Army soldier who transitioned amid getting sentenced for espionage.

OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB

Deacon King Kong by James McBride

This novel tells the story of a church deacon who shoots the neighborhood drug dealer point blank range in front of the community and the aftermath.

“In naming Deacon King Kong my latest Oprah’s Book Club selection, I am hoping readers will find in it what I did: sorrow, joy, resilience, humanity, and an understanding that while we struggle with pain and trauma, we can find shelter in one another—just as the characters in the Cause housing project in McBride’s Brooklyn do,” Oprah wrote in the Instagram announcement. 

READ WITH JENNA – TODAY SHOW BOOK CLUB

Friends and Strangers by J. Courtney Sullivan

Jenna Bush Hager’s book club via her Today Show gig is one of the hottest books of the season. The main character is a new mother who hires a college senior as a baby-sitter. As they grow close, the baby-sitter’s relationship with the mother’s father-in-law leads to a betrayal.

“I wanted to explore American life in the pre-Trump years and sort of how we got here,” the author said in an article introducing the book club pick. “The book very much digs into the gig economy, the shrinking safety net and the notion that privilege takes many different forms.”

REESE’S BOOK CLUB

I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown

The Guest List by Lucy Foley

After the book club delayed its selection announcement in June, actress Reese Witherspoon directed her book club to make two selections—a first to recognize current events. Both books will be read over June and July.

“Elevating women’s stories is at the core of Reese’s Book Club. I love how this community champions the narrative for women and we are just getting started,” the book club placed in a graphic on Instagram. “Unity and understanding through the lens of storytelling is how we will continue these meaningful conversations.”

Readers expressed their disappointment in the comments over the book club adding a book by a Black woman author last minute and not pushing back the book by a White woman author to another month.

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what's lit

April 2020 Celebrity Book Club Picks

AMERIE’S BOOK CLUB

Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson

Singer-turned-writer Amerie chose Kevin Wilson’s New York Times best-seller and former Read With Jenna book club pick for her April book.

“An outrageous yet grounded read that had me laughing out loud and tearing up in the same paragraph, Kevin Wilson’s Nothing to See Here explores parenthood and found family, while also addressing the very frightening phenomena of spontaneous combustion, of which, like the author, I grew up scared to death,” Amerie wrote in her Instagram post announcing the book selection.

BELLETRIST BOOK CLUB

Writers & Lovers by Lily King

 

Actress Emma Roberts’ book club chose Lily King’s new novel. The book was also a March selection for the Today Show’s Read With Jenna book club.

 

In an Instagram post on her personal account, Emma said, “So excited to read along with you guys and discuss!”

 

GMA BOOK CLUB

Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore

Good Morning America‘s book club named Margarita Montimore’s debut novel. In the U.K., the same book is titled The Rearranged Life of Oona Lockhart. Both have abstract covers of Oona’s face with the GMA book club reposting some of their favorites from readers.

“I’m so grateful ‘GMA’ has chosen my novel ‘Oona Out of Order’ as its latest book club pick,” Margarita told GMA in its story on the book club pick. “I know the whole world feels like it’s out of order right now, and social distancing is tough, but join ‘GMA’s’ Book Club and we’ll all feel less isolated as we get lost in this uplifting story.”

NONAME’S BOOK CLUB

Mean by Myriam Gurba

War Against All Puerto Ricans: Revolution and Terror in America’s Colony by Nelson A. Denis

Indie rapper Noname’s book club usually selects two books each month, with Noname picking one and someone else naming the “homie pick.” Noname chose Mean by Myriam Gurba and Yahdon Israel, founder of Brooklyn-based @literaryswagbookclub, chose War Against All Puerto Ricans.

The book club says it stands in solidarity with the prisoners who participate in the book club over demanding more protection such as masks during the coronavirus COVID-19 forced quarantine. After announcing it had to cancel all in-person meetings due the pandemic, the book club recently started its own newspaper, Out of Print, for Patreon members.

OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB

Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker

After the controversy around her last book club pick American Dirt, Oprah Winfrey chose the biography of a family where six out of 12 of the children were born with schizophrenia and became a major source of research for scientists working to understand the genetics behind the devastating mental illness.

“This is a riveting true story of an American family that reads like a medical detective journey,” Oprah announced in a video. “It reveals the shame, denial, shock, confusion and misunderstanding of mental illness at a time when no one was really sure what schizophrenia was or how to treat it.”

READ WITH JENNA – TODAY SHOW BOOK CLUB

Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore

Former first daughter and Today Show co-host Jenna Bush Hager picked Elizabeth Wetmore’s debut novel that publisher Harper Collins describes as “explores the lingering effects of a brutal crime on the women of one small Texas oil town in the 1970s.”

“Elizabeth really developed these characters that I felt like I knew,” Jenna said about the debut novel on Today’s website. “I found myself missing them when the story was over. The women are complicated. They are a lot of things at once.”

As a native Texan, Jenna added that Elizabeth portrays Texas life just right in Valentine.

“I spent a good portion of my childhood eavesdropping on my mother and her girlfriends as they sat out on the back porch after dinner, and I listened to them telling stories,” Elizabeth told Today. “They would sit out there with their cigarettes and mix drinks because it was the ’70s, and I listened to them rehashing their days.”

REESE’S BOOK CLUB

Untamed by Glennon Doyle

Rising book club queen Reese Witherspoon, who’s currently starring in Little Fires Everywhere based on Celeste Ng’s novel, has chosen well-known memoirist Glennon Doyle’s latest book, Untamed.

 

“It’s an absolute joy to announce Glennon Doyle’s UNTAMED as my April book pick,” Reese wrote at the top of her Hello Sunshine announcement email. “This memoir is so packed with incredible insight about what it means to be a woman today, what it means to be “good,” and what woman will do in order to be loved. I swear I highlighted something in EVERY chapter. This book really spoke to me in so many ways!”

 

Glennon also wrote an essay about her writing process on Hello Sunshine’s website.
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what's lit

Celeb Bookwomen Announce Their June Book Club Picks

Reese Witherspoon / Hello Sunshine

Here’s a quick roundup of the celebrity-helmed book clubs and their June books:

Actress and producer Reese Witherspoon chooses The Cactus by Sarah Haywood for Hello Sunshine.

“Susan, our main character, navigates a love triangle, family drama, and being pregnant for the first time at 45. Hope y’all love Susan as much as I do!,” Reese said in the announcement.

 

Sarah also wrote an exclusive essay for Hello Sunshine about the themes resonating through her novel.

 

NBC correspondent and former first daughter Jenna Bush Hager chooses Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok for Today Show Book Club.

“It’s a mystery,” Jenna said in the announcement. “Sylvie Lee is the main character and she’s a golden child. She disappears. The story unfolds as her family copes and discovers all the secrets surrounding her life.” She added the team unveiled the book club pick later than usual because the book was released on June 4.

Belletrist, the book blog administered by actress Emma Roberts and producer Karah Preiss, also chose Searching for Sylvie Lee for June with its branded digestible interview with the author.

Actress Emma Roberts’ Our Shared Shelf on Goodreads is still reading Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, a book the bimonthly book club chose in May. The book also is a National Book Award Finalist and now available in paperback.

“Min Jin Lee is unabashedly a feminist and her resilient female characters propel this riveting story,” the book club wrote in its announcement. “Lee has written a moving, historical saga that is also a timeless masterpiece; almost 500 pages long, and we didn’t want it to end. This brilliant, eye-opening novel is about outsiders, minorities, the disenfranchised and yet somehow embraces us all.”

Indie rock pop band Florence + The Machine is reading three books for its Between Two Books club: Read and Riot by artist, activist, and Pussy Riot founder Nadya Tolokonnikova; My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter by Aja Monet; and The Terrible by Yrsa Daley-Ward.

 

“The title of Yrsa Daley-Ward’s book, ‘The Terrible,’ can mean different things to each reader. It can be a feeling you can’t quite word. It can describe depression. It can refer to the things you fear,” the book club tweeted June 6.

 

Side note: Florence + The Machine’s 2011 album Ceremonials is a wonderfully lyrical and musical album for a writing session.