Celebrity Book Club Picks: January 2022

Created on January 4, 2022, 10:47 am

Last Updated January 17, 2022, 2:39 pm

Since Oprah’s first book club pick in 1996, we have been reading as the celebrities do, falling in love with, or hating, characters with our fellow book club readers. Book clubs offer an opportunity to be in community with others, even if we’re not together in person. Other celebrities who love to read have started book clubs, to varying degrees of success. Enjoy these August picks from well-established and new celebrity book clubs. Please note: Many of these books are brand new releases. We’ve ordered extra copies, but if you’re waiting on hold, be sure to check out the new materials shelves at the Maze and Dole branches and Hot Picks at the Main Library. These copies can’t be placed on hold or renewed. If the title is listed as available in the catalog, head over and pick up your next read before someone snatches it up!

1) Noor

Author

Okorafor, Nnedi

Series

DAW book collectors volume no. 1898

Notes

The Audacious Book Club from Roxane Gay

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, Pre-loaded Audio

Description

Click to view

When everything goes wrong on a trip to the local market, AO, a woman with a ton of major and necessary body augmentations, must race against time across the deserts of Northern Nigeria with a Fulani herdsman named DNA in a world where everything is streamed.

2) Lot: stories

Author

Washington, Bryan

Notes

The Gathering of Voices book club from Jesmyn Ward

Formats:

Book, Large Print

Description

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"In the city of Houston - a sprawling, diverse microcosm of America - the son of a black mother and a Latino father is coming of age. He's working at his family's restaurant, weathering his brother's blows, resenting his older sister's absence. And discovering he likes boys. Around him, others live and thrive and die in Houston's myriad neighborhoods: a young woman whose affair detonates across an apartment complex, a ragtag baseball team, a group...

3) The undocumented Americans

Author

Villavicencio, Karla Cornejo

Notes

The Call In book club from Megan Rapinoe

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook

Description

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"Traveling across the country, journalist Karla Cornejo Villavicencio risked arrest at every turn to report the extraordinary stories of her fellow undocumented Americans. Her subjects have every reason to be wary around reporters, but Cornejo Villavicencio has unmatched access to their stories. Her work culminates in a stunning, essential read for our times. Born in Ecuador and brought to the United States when she was five years old, Cornejo Villavicencio...

4) Call us what we carry: poems

Author

Gorman, Amanda

Notes

The Fearless book club from Malala Yousafzai

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle, Large Print

Description

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"The luminous poetry collection by #1 New York Times bestselling author and presidential inaugural poet Amanda Gorman captures a shipwrecked moment in time and transforms it into a lyric of hope and healing. In Call Us What We Carry, Gorman explores history, language, identity, and erasure through an imaginative and intimate collage. Harnessing the collective grief of a global pandemic, her poems shine a light on a moment of reckoning and reveal that...

5) Honor: a novel

Author

Umrigar, Thrity

Series

Thorndike Press large print basic

Notes

Reese's Book Club from Reese Witherspoon

Formats:

Book, Audiobook CD, Audiobook MP3-CD, eBook, Kindle, Large Print

Description

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"Indian American journalist Smita has returned to India to cover a story, but reluctantly: long ago she and her family left the country with no intention of ever coming back. As she follows the case of Meena--a Hindu woman attacked by members of her own village and her own family for marrying a Muslim man--Smita comes face to face with a society where tradition carries more weight than one's own heart, and a story that threatens to unearth the painful...

6) The school for good mothers: a novel

Author

Chan, Jessamine

Notes

Read with Jenna from Jenna Bush Hager

Formats:

Book, Audiobook CD, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle, Large Print

Description

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"Set in near-future America, The School for Good Mothers introduces readers to a government-run reform program where bad mothers are retrained using robot doll children with artificial intelligence. Protagonist Frida Liu, a 39-year-old Chinese-American single mother in Philadelphia, loses custody of her 18-month-old daughter, Harriet, after she leaves Harriet home alone for two hours on one very bad day. To regain custody, Frida must spend a year...

7) The maid: a novel

Author

Prose, Nita

Notes

Good Morning America Book Club

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle, Kit, Large Print, Pre-loaded Audio

Description

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"A charmingly eccentric hotel maid discovers a guest murdered in his bed, turning her once orderly world upside down--and inspiring a motley crew of unexpected allies to band together to solve the mystery--in this utterly original debut. Molly Dunn is not like everyone else. She struggles with social skills and interprets people literally. Her gran used to interpret the world for her, codifying it into simple rules that Molly could live by. Since...

8) Fiona and Jane

Author

Ho, Jean Chen

Series

Thorndike Press large print

Notes

Belletrist Book Club from Emma Roberts

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle, Large Print

Description

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"A witty, warm, and irreverent book that traces the lives of two young Taiwanese American women as they navigate friendship, sexuality, identity, and heartbreak over two decades. Best friends since second grade, Fiona Lin and Jane Shen explore the lonely freeways and seedy bars of Los Angeles together through their teenage years, surviving unfulfilling romantic encounters, and carrying with them the scars of their families' tumultuous pasts. Fiona...