Celebrity Book Clubs & Why I'm Always Thinking About Them
If Jenna Bush Hager wanted to recommend your book, would you say yes?
The other day, I logged on to Instagram, and saw that two of my favorite authors had posted about the same thing: Reese Witherspoon’s book club had launched its own app. Because I am endlessly fascinated by the celeb book club phenomenon, I downloaded it.
The app is fine. It’s basically goodreads if you could only talk about books that Reese had picked for her book club (which is technically two book clubs, having recently decided to pick a YA book a month, too). Honestly, I wish goodreads was more like this app; it’s quite pretty. But I figured this was a good excuse to talk about celeb book clubs, a phenomenon I am always thinking about.
To talk about celeb book clubs, we need to go all the way back to the 90s, to Oprah’s. Oprah was considered the biggest influencer in publishing, moving books like no other media personality could. Honestly, I would recommend doing a read-through of the Oprah’s Book Club Wikipedia page, because it’s such a time capsule of late 90s sexism. One guy at the time basically said that it’s impossible to talk about “serious literature” in a book club. Garbage. Oprah and her people picked a pretty fascinating selection of books. They selected classics, like Song of Solomon and Anna Karenina, books that were a few years old, like The Poisonwood Bible and Middlesex, and brand new releases, like, infamously, Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections. The book club was an essential part of Oprah’s transformation into the intellectual powerhouse we think of today. (For more on this, I recommend the “Making Oprah” podcast from a couple years ago.)
The thing I want to point out about the Oprah Book Club is that, while it boosted the sales of the books and made a lot of people a lot of money, the goal of the book club in and of itself was just to talk about the books. Oprah didn’t pick books because she was hoping to personally produce a film based on them. She (and her team) just liked them.
I previously talked about Reese’s book club in one our very first issues, but to recap quickly: Reese’s book club grew out of her desire to option books for film and TV projects, in order to ensure that she would still get good roles as she aged out of the young Hollywood starlet demo. Now, instead of adapting previously existing bestsellers, like Wild and Big Little Lies, she uses her book club to make best sellers, and then gets the rights. It’s happened with Little Fires Everywhere (2020 Hulu series), Daisy Jones & The Six (upcoming Amazon series) and Where The Crawdads Sing (upcoming movie. also please read this article about how fucked up that book is). They’ve also optioned many of the other books, including the first three of Jasmine Guillory’s romance novels (the second was a book club pick). I recommend this article about the “Reese literary canon” and what type of books have been big hits for her.
Like Oprah before her, having a book club also makes Reese seem intellectual and helps her expand her brand. I understand why Reese has a book club, and what she wants to do with it.
The book club I personally contemplate the most is Jenna Bush Hager’s Today show book club. She focuses on debut novels.
On the one hand, it makes sense. In the last few years, Jenna took over for Kathie Lee on the last hour of Today, joining Hoda behind the chair. Kathie Lee’s niche was getting drunk at 10 a.m., so Jenna had to find her own, and she settled on books. In explaining why Jenna was starting a book club, Today reminded viewers that Jenna’s mother, former First Lady Laura Bush, was a librarian and literacy was her big White House “cause.” Jenna also claims to make all the picks herself, unlike Reese. And it’s definitely cool that authors get a big platform like Today.
But I get tripped up by the Bush of it all. JBH only got her job on Today because she was a first daughter and first granddaughter (she joined NBC shortly after George W. Bush left the White House). Jenna has, in some ways, tried to separate herself from her family’s Republicanism, saying in a 2010 interview that she and her twin Barbara are both “very independent thinkers.” Jenna, to me, wants to have it both ways — to be a Bush, and to be just Jenna.
Children don’t have to spend their lives answering for the sins of their parents (and grandparents and uncles and cousins…), but I do think when your family is as evil as the Bushes, you should say something. Instead, Jenna has used her platform on Today to launder her father’s reputation and help contribute to the dangerous fiction that he’s just a cuddly, fun guy. In September 2020, she released an essay collection about how wonderful her grandparents are. I’m sure Jenna would say she’s staying “apolitical” by focusing on the personal, but art is political. And trying to make people forget what ghouls your father and grandfather are is political.
It’s fascinating to me that, in the world of publishing, I’ve seen no real pushback toward the idea of Jenna having a book club. I have never heard of anyone rejecting the label. Maybe it’s because she mostly chooses debut books whose authors need that extra push. It’s big money on the table. And maybe the acceptance is the mark of the ultimate success of the Jenna Bush Hager project — most people don’t think of her family members at all when they hear her name.
Of course, the success of Jenna at Today meant that Today’s biggest competitor, Good Morning America, launched their own book club in the fall of 2019. They say it features “diverse and compelling” books, which is pretty vague, and there’s no one personality tied to it, so it’s not clear just who is selecting the books. Jenna’s book club has made books shoot up the Amazon charts in minutes, and it’s unclear if GMA has had the same success. Watch this space.
If, reading this, you think the celebrity book club space is over-crowded don’t worry: there are more. Emma Watson actually started one way back in 2016, and it mostly lives on the hideous goodreads website. Unlike Reese, Jenna, and GMA, she has no sticker that publishers place on book covers. Others, like Emily Ratajowksi and Sarah Jessica Parker and Emma Roberts, have also tried to throw their hat in the rink, with limited success. One of the Mets just announced one, starting with the horrifyingly titled What Doesn't Kill Us: How Freezing Water, Extreme Altitude, and Environmental Conditioning Will Renew Our Lost Evolutionary Strength. Roxane Gay is running a book club in her newsletter. I’m shocked Mindy Kaling hasn’t tried it yet.
But the newest, weirdest strain of book clubs is aimed at closing the circle of commerce even tighter. On literati.com, not only will the celebrity — like Malala or Steph Curry — pick the book, but you pay them to mail it to you, too. In Steph’s book club, “We read inspiring true stories about underrated people who beat the odds.” I am rolling my eyes. Malala’s features “inspiring books by women with bold ideas from around the world,” which is just vague enough to mean anything, including, again, a novel by Jasmine Guillory.
Which is another fascinating part of this. All these book clubs start to pick the same books! On the Book of the Month website, you can buy books picked by all these other clubs. It’s not bad to promote books, but it is strange and depressing that the book PR machinery all comes together to promote the same things. Glennon Doyle didn’t need to be a Reese pick to sell big. Zadie Smith sold many copies of White Teeth before Malala mailed it to a bunch of people. The Vanishing Half was already set to be a huge hit before GMA selected it.
All this is to say that when my novel (eventually) comes out, I hope it can get a sticker on the front from the Hailey Baldwin Bieber Book Club.
The Literati book clubs infuriate me because I would love to see what Susan Orlean has to say about her book selections, but I don't want to pay to get the big-ass hardback copies. Can I get a e-pub edition, Literati?