Celeb Book-fluencers: How to Use Your Fame for Good in Santa Barbara
Famous People Like Good Books Too
By Leslie Dinaberg | July 14, 2022
Credit: Courtesy
It all started with Oprah.
Not that people weren’t reading before the sometime Montecito resident made it her mission to bring a love of reading to the masses by starting the Oprah’s Book Club segment of her talk show in September of 1996 with the selection of the then recently published novel The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard. The rest, as they say, is history. Many obscure titles became breakout hits thanks to the much lauded “Oprah bump,” and in total the club recommended 70 books during its 15 years. When the show ended, Oprah’s “bookfluence” morphed into many forms and moved in and out of fashion for a few more years, mostly recently at Apple TV.
The trend of celebrity book influencers has continued to grow — with Jenna Bush, Jimmy Fallon, Netflix, Good Morning America, and Stephen Curry getting into the game — perhaps most notably with sometime Ojai resident Reese Witherspoon’s book club, which has not only sold bajillions of books, but paid it forward with a nonprofit component called The Readership, which is “on a mission to advance diverse voices, promote literacy and make book joy available to all.”
Ever the multi-tasker, Reese’s Book Club has a good eye (and impressive track record) for books that will perform well on screen, championing titles like Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid, Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, and Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng — all of which have made, or will be making, their way to a screen near you.
My personal Oprah recommendations: House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III, Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, An American Marriage by Tayari Jones, and Open House (and everything else) by Elizabeth Berg.
My personal Reese recommendations: The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave, The Chicken Sisters by K.J. Dell’Antonia, Group by Christine Tate, The Guest List by Lucy Foley, Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid, The Alice Network by Kate Quinn, and Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman.
You must be logged in to post a comment.