We’ve come a long way since Oprah’s Book Club ruled our literary roost. These days, it seems like every thoughtful, beautiful celebrity out there has their own book club. There are so many that it can be hard to know which ones are worth your time. From Kaia Gerber’s Library Science to the cult-favorite, Not Kiana’s Book Club, we’ll give you the lowdown on all the best book clubs for the thought daughters of the world.
Not Kiana’s Book Club by Kiana Naomi
Founded in 2022, this NYC-based book club has been the IYKYK favorite of literary baddies. Running on the book club platform, Fable, their most recent run of picks has featured a lot of romance novels with POC leads, written primarily by women.
Day-to-day, Not Kiana’s Book Club comes in the form of spoiler-free chat rooms where you can engage with other readers based on what chapter you’re both on. Then, every month or so, Kiana hosts in-person meetups across the country where you can gather with other NKBC members, have a blind date with a book, or enjoy a picnic.
Celebrity Memoir Book Club by Claire Parker and Ashley Hamilton
This is a little bit of an unconventional book club. Celebrity Memoir Book Club is primarily a podcast where two comedians (Claire and Ashley) read celebrity memoirs and snarkily break them down over the course of an hour. They do have a Patreon where their fans, which they call Worms (a la BookWorms), convene and discuss the books — as well as in-person meetups where you can hang out, drink and play games together. Now while this doesn’t look like your traditional book club, they do have a spectacular reading list and it can be insanely fun to hear them pick apart a book that you both hated together.
Library Science by Kaia Gerber
The Saturday Night starlet and famed gorgeous daughter of supermodel Cindy Crawford, Kaia Gerber revved up her book club Library Science in the midst of the pandemic. Since then, she has sat down with the likes of Paul Mescal, Daisy Edgar-Jones and Gracie Abrams (among others) to do a deep dive on the books, subsequent recreations and the social context with which these texts exist. Library Science runs the gamut of genres, featuring debut fiction, short stories, translations, essays, memoirs, plays and poetry.
Reese’s Book Club by Reese Witherspoon
Reese’s Book Club is probably the most famous club on this list. For a while, the Reese Witherspoon-helmed project filled the long-worn shoes of Oprah’s Book Club as the primary destination for women’s book recommendations.
Born in the #GirlBoss era of feminism, Reese explained that her primary motivation in starting the book club was to rectify the lack of well-written and well-rounded scripts for women in Hollywood. Since then, Reese has definitely put her money where her mouth is, as her book club operates as an arm of her production company, Hello Sunshine. Notably, quite a few of the titles read in Reese’s book club have become major motion pictures and prestige tv shows (Big Little Lies, Daisy Jones and the Six, Where the Crawdads Sing…. Need I say more?).
The book club also offers an opportunity for emerging authors to be mentored through a fellowship called LitUp, which will prepare them to launch their first book.
The Laufey Book Club by Laufey
Certainly the most intimate and special book club on this list belongs to Laufey, the beloved Icelandic-Chinese singer. During her tours, she is known to organize “Little Laufey Libraries” where her fans can exchange books with each other across different cities. This has since evolved into her Laufey Book Club pop-ups where she partners with bookstores around the world to showcase her selections. Day-to-day, the book club operates off of a very active discord channel, where fans talk not only about the books but just about everything in the literary world.
TeaTime Book Club by Dakota Johnson
Dakota Johnson loves moodier, darker stories rich with niche references — so it’s no surprise that her book club, TeaTime, would feature just that. Hosted via a broadcast channel on Dakota Johnson’s Instagram, TeaTime is a monthly deep dive posted by (ostensibly) Dakota herself talking about her latest read. Dakota seems to have taken a page out of Reese Witherspoon’s book and aims to use the TeaTime book club as an R&D arm of her production company, TeaTime Pictures, which she co-founded with former Netflix development executive, Ro Donnelly.
Service95 Book Club by Dua Lipa
Featuring interviews with authors like Ocean Vuong and George Saunders, articles about Culture, Activism, Fashion and Travel and a podcast with guests like Troye Sivan and Apple’s Tim Cook, Dua Lipa’s Service95 is honestly more of a full-on magazine than it is a book club. Service95 has kind of become a one-stop-shop for everything a thought daughter would find interesting. Her recommendations go beyond the typical #BookTok faire. With selections like Dogs and Monsters by Mark Haddon and The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk, readers will certainly be exposed to new and exciting titles.
