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Join today<\/a><\/p>\n \n Already a member? She\u2019s one of the world\u2019s biggest pop sensations, smashes Spotify streaming records, has completed three world tours<\/a> and has a glittering stash of seven Brits and three Grammys\u2026 but even Dua Lipa<\/a> finds time to read. <\/p>\n Since she launched her book club in 2023, Lipa, 31, has become increasingly influential as an advocate for reading. On her cultural platform Service95, she shares monthly book recommendations and carries out long-form interviews with authors from Margaret Atwood<\/a> to Percival Everett. And this month, she is curating London Literature Festival as part of the Southbank Centre<\/a>\u2019s 75th anniversary programme, where she will interview star authors including Zadie Smith<\/a>, Patti Smith<\/a> and Mustafa.<\/p>\n Lipa is part of a wave of celebrities who are moving into the books sphere, from Reese Witherspoon<\/a> to Kaia Gerber<\/a>. Her curation of the festival coincides with the UK\u2019s National Year of Reading, which aims to tackle the decline in reading and help people rediscover the joy of getting lost in a book. The initiative arrives after research by the National Literacy Trust showed that reading enjoyment among UK children hit a 20-year low in 2025, at 32.7 per cent. <\/p>\n \u201cThere are phones, and so many distractions, and so much going on all the time in our lives \u2013 sometimes it\u2019s hard to just find a moment to sit down and read,\u201d Lipa says. \u201cYou know, most of us are addicted to our phones. I just recently got an app\u2026 it blocks your social media, so that\u2019s been really handy. I\u2019m like, \u2018All right, I have my one hour a day that I can just quickly do what I have to do online, and not doom scroll.\u2019 And that\u2019s given me extra hours to read.\u201d<\/p>\n Her advice for reading more would be: \u201cLimit your screen time. Throw your phone away. Do something! Something like an app that just takes you off your phone and makes a real point of putting it to the side. I think we all know how easy it is just to get locked in a doom scroll until three o\u2019clock in the morning, and then you\u2019re like, \u2018What have I done?\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n When it comes to Lipa\u2019s own reading routine, she dives into a book in any spare minute she can find. This is often when she\u2019s travelling \u2013 whether on tour or on an extremely Instagrammable holiday. \u201cI read in the car, on a plane, on the way to wherever I\u2019m going,\u201d she says. \u201cSometimes before bed, sometimes early in the morning. It really depends, but it\u2019s everywhere and anywhere.<\/p>\n \u201cI always have a book in my bag, and then whenever I have a moment\u2026 I\u2019m trying to get off my phone as much as possible, so it\u2019s like \u2013 phone away and just read.\u201d<\/p>\n The books that have stayed with her the most \u2013 and ones she would bring with her if whisked away to a desert island \u2013 are an eclectic mix. The first is Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell<\/a>\u2019s classic novel about mass surveillance and unchecked government power. \u201cI gift that book a lot, and it just surprises me every time,\u201d she says, adding that its dystopian themes pull her in. \u201cThe fascination of that will keep it going for me, on a desert island, if I had to read it over and over again.\u201d<\/p>\n She also chooses coming-of-age novel My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante<\/a>, which tells the story of an intense friendship between two women growing up in poverty in post-war Naples. \u201cI love that book,\u201d she says. \u201cI love the story and where it takes me, into Naples. And on a desert island, you need a book that takes you out of where you are.\u201d<\/p>\n Her third choice is Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders<\/a>, the short story writer\u2019s Booker Prize-winning debut novel about a night in 1862 when a grieving Abraham Lincoln<\/a> visits the crypt of his son Willie, and features 166 ghost characters. \u201cBecause with 150 characters in a book, I just simply can\u2019t get bored.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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Piccadilly Lights celebrating Lipa and the London Literature Festival (Getty)<\/p>\n