{"id":23156,"date":"2025-09-15T05:33:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T05:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/23156\/"},"modified":"2025-09-15T05:33:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T05:33:08","slug":"claudias-corner-there-are-too-many-celebrity-book-clubs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/23156\/","title":{"rendered":"Claudia’s Corner: There are too many celebrity book clubs"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1996, Oprah Winfrey founded Oprah\u2019s Book Club. At the time, Oprah\u2019s decision to share her picks was laughable in upmarket literary circles. Jonathan Franzen, author of \u201cThe Corrections,\u201c famously indicated<\/a> in an NPR interview that Oprah\u2019s club was \u201cfor women,\u201d and that he was attempting to attract a more \u2018literary\u2019 audience for his work \u2014 that audience being men.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nearly 30 years later, the celebrity book club has become a staple on Barnes & Noble shelves; it\u2019s nearly impossible to walk down an aisle without spotting stickers emblazoned on sleek covers bearing the names of Reese Witherspoon or Jenna Bush Hager.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The celebrity book club has become something of a social phenomenon. Dakota Johnson, Laufey and Dua Lipa all run book clubs. Just last year<\/a>, influencer and model Kaia Gerber officially launched her club, Library Science. The book club sticker has become both a stamp of approval and a cultural signifier. While the book club effect has yet to be formally described, Reese\u2019s Book Club has become a titan of marketing. It\u2019s also introduced<\/a> countless readers to new stories from female voices, as Reese\u2019s monthly picks are dedicated to women writers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I wholeheartedly believe it\u2019s a good thing that celebrities are utilizing their platforms to promote literature; instead of snake oil hair gummies or their makeup line, they\u2019re influencing us with Sally Rooney\u2019s \u201cIntermezzo.\u201d Yet, I can\u2019t help but wonder what they might be gaining from this. In August of 2021, Witherspoon sold<\/a> her company, Hello Sunshine, for a whopping $900 million. It was through Hello Sunshine that Witherspoon was able to bring book club picks like \u201cLittle Fires Everywhere\u201d to screen, a show she also happened to star in.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While I don\u2019t think that all celebrities with book clubs are playing a malicious long con, there is something to be said about the profits that can be had, both financially and culturally, from book promotion.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Celebrities may claim<\/a> they have nothing to gain from promoting debut authors, but they do. Even if Kaia Gerber<\/a> truly enjoys \u201cMartyr!\u201d and \u201cSpring Awakening,” with an Introduction by Jonathan Franzen, it\u2019s hard to deny the intellectual clout that comes with the book club.<\/p>\n

The book club offers another side to celebrity, a profession often characterized by airheadedness and vanity. It allows them to briefly shed their skin and take on the role of learned, thoughtful academic and layperson all at once.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The club is also another arm of their ever-growing brand, where they become avenues<\/a> for production companies and profit. Like philanthropy and makeup, talking about their next read becomes another hobby they can profit from. And while the artist may benefit from exposure, the books selected are already destined to be hits, like \u201cLittle Fires Everywhere\u201d or \u201cThe Nightingale.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Though more celebrity book clubs will continue to crop up, the rise of BookTok has already transformed<\/a> the future of literature. For Gen Z readers, the book club sticker has become outdated and a mark of the millennial beast. Where the mass market book club depends on the celebrity. BookTok depends on popular opinion and genres like \u201cromantasy.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

With so many celebrity book clubs out there, it\u2019s no wonder that BookTok exploded the way it did.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of all the celebs to grace us with a book club, perhaps the best is Dua Lipa. The singer-songwriter has been praised<\/a> for the depth of her discussions, as well as her interviewing skills. Rather than slap a sticker on a book, Lipa focuses on writing clever, creative questions for her interviews with authors like Hern\u00e1n Diaz. Her influence cannot be understated; it\u2019s partly why she was chosen to speak<\/a> at the Booker Prize ceremony in 2022, one of the biggest fiction awards of the year, rather than Witherspoon.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While still the foremost way to publicize a novel, the market for celebrity book clubs like Witherspoon\u2019s is on its way out.\u200b\u200b Dozens of stars are searching for the next \u201cWhere the Crawdads Sing,” each hoping to add their name to the cover. But with nothing new to set them apart, they are destined for the celebrity slush pile. BookTok is proof that Gen Z wants to hear new voices.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Claudia Fuller is a junior studying creative writing at Ohio University. Please note the opinions expressed in this column do not represent those of The Post. Want to talk to Claudia about her column? Email her at cf204322@ohio.edu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 1996, Oprah Winfrey founded Oprah\u2019s Book Club. At the time, Oprah\u2019s decision to share her picks was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23157,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[489,156,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-23156","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}