Gone are the days of associating the word “Book Club” with your mother’s group of friends or the 2018 film starring Diane Keaton and Jane Fonda. Lately, several celebrities have been taking to Instagram and Twitter to share their current reads, some even going as far to start virtual clubs with fans and fellow bookworms. Maybe you have been feeling overwhelmed with the sheer amount of book choices (and/or free time you have) during the pandemic. To help narrow things down, see below for a list of the books celebrities have been reading lately.

Reese Witherspoon

If you are a) craving community and b) looking for copious amounts of great reads during quarantine, allow Reese Witherspoon to show you the way. Reese’s Book Club is now a mainstay in the digital world. Her Instagram account has 1.6 million followers, with monthly book picks focused on women’s stories (both fiction and non-fiction).  This month’s choice is The Henna Artist by Alika Joshi – a novel about a 17-year-old girl who escapes an abusive marriage and finds her way in 1950s Jaipur.

The book club has catapulted many authors to the top of bestsellers lists, but Witherspoon told Jane Pauley on Sunday Morning that she doesn’t get a profit of sales when she chooses her monthly book. “Putting them [authors] in a position where they get read and seen when they deserve it so much is everything,” she said. It’s a wholesome vibe all around.

Kaia Gerber

For those who are voracious readers (i.e. if you’re tearing through a book or more per week), Kaia Gerber has you covered for your next read. The model has been hosting weekly Instagram Live chats, discussing her chosen novels with authors. She recently hosted Jia Tolentino, author of the celebrated book of essays, Trick Mirror, for potentially the buzziest live book chat of quarantine thus far. She was also recently joined by her mom, supermodel Cindy Crawford, to discuss the acclaimed 2019 novel, Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens.

Oprah Winfrey

Oprah’s book club is the original hub for book lovers. Since 1996, she has been uniting thousands of people around the world with literature. What started as a segment on the Oprah Winfrey Show has now turned into an app and even an Apple+ TV show. Basically, if you see an “Official Oprah’s Book Club Selection” sticker on a novel, you can trust that it’s probably excellent. Her current pick is Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker, but you can also browse her complete, decades-spanning list of books here.

Emma Roberts

Emma Roberts is one of the most-recent celebrities to hop on the book club bandwagon. Her virtual book club, Belletrist, launched last year. This month’s book is The Book of V by Anna Solomon. The Belletrist Instagram is a great resource for all things literature; each month, Roberts shouts out an independent book store and posts exclusive content, like “In Conversations” where authors interview each other.

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IN CONVERSATION is a series in which one author interviews another author about their book. Episode 2: @IKnowKayleen author (and friend of Belletrist) of #TextMeWhenYouGetHome interviews @MarisaMeltzer about her new book #ThisIsBig from @LittleBrown . . . From contributor to The Cut, one of Vogue’s “Most Anticipated Books of 2020,” that has something to “bravely and honestly” (Busy Philipps) say about weight and weight loss and which also sheds a light on Jean Nidetch, the founder of Weight Watcher, an early and forgotten female founder. Marisa Meltzer began her first diet at the age of five. Growing up an indoors-loving child in Northern California, she learned from an early age that weight was the one part of her life she could neither change nor even really understand. Fast forward nearly four decades. Marisa, also a contributor to the New Yorker and the New York Times, comes across an obituary for Jean Nidetch, the Queens, New York housewife who founded Weight Watchers in 1963. Weaving Jean’s incredible story as weight loss maven and pathbreaking entrepreneur with Marisa’s own journey through Weight Watchers, she chronicles the deep parallels, and enduring frustrations, in each woman’s decades-long efforts to lose weight and keep it off. The result is funny, unexpected, and unforgettable: a testament to how transformation goes far beyond a number on the scale.

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Emma Watson

Emma Watson is a well-known bookworm and has always been generous sharing her favourite novels with the public. Now is no different; using #oursharedquarantineshelf, she promoted books like Untamed Glennon Doyle, This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay and Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer.

Florence Welch

Florence Welch of Florence + the Machine started Between Two Books in 2012 to unite book lovers across the world. Ever the devoted reader, Welch also posts her personal picks on her own Instagram page. Right now she’s into Rest and Be Thankful by Emma Glass, while @betweentwobooks is promoting wow, no thank you by Samantha Irby.

Other self-isolation picks include Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong and My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Otessa Moshfegh. Check out the full self-isolation book list here.

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Next up on our reading list is ‘Minor Feelings’ by Cathy Park Hong; a portrait of the artist as an Asian American woman, and an examination of the ‘racialised range of emotions’ she experiences. In these essays, Hong unravels what it means to be 'Asian American', a term that has only existed for 50 years. With radical candour she interrogates her own shame and prejudices and exposes the lies behind the ‘model minority’ myth. Hong is also a poet, and examines the subject with nuance; the essays explore US race relations, the legacy of war, trauma, immigration, white supremacy and capitalism. This would be a full-throated endorsement at the best of times, and now, amidst the racist violence and dehumanisation of East Asian people in the wake of Corona-panic, the book feels more relevant than ever. @cathyparkhong @oneworldbooks @profile.books @penguinrandomhouse @janklownesbit #minorfeelings #cathyparkhong

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Ali Wong

Comedians like to cry just as much as the rest of us. Take Ali Wong: the Netflix stand-up veteran posted on her Instagram page, raving about the cult-favourite tear-jerker On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by poet and author, Ocean Vuong. “One of the more compelling things I’ve prioritized over washing my hair and wiping the rice/glitter/goldfish off the bottom of my feet: “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” by @ocean_vuong ❤️ ❤️❤️ It blew me away,” she captioned the post.

Kendall Jenner

We would be remiss to exclude Kendall Jenner from a list of celebrities’ current reads. After becoming a surprising face of alternative literature, many are counting on Jenner to indirectly recommend their next great read. Technically, this post is from pre-quarantine, but How to Cure a Ghost by Australian-Canadian writer Fariha Róisín seems to be her most publicized read as of now.

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me and this bikini: a love story

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