Celebrity women dominating the book club scene
It’s Witherspoon versus Parker, and it’s nothing but the fine print.
In the sphere of celebrity book clubs — a trend that’s been enabled by Instagram over the last several years, fizzed both sales and word-of-mouth, and become the ultimate actress accessory (who needs a Birkin?) — Reese and Sarah Jessica circle like Ali and Frazier. Duking it out in the bookworm ring, the former appeared to be winning, what with her ability to home in on material that she would then adapt (see: Wild, Gone Girl, Big Little Lies) and a monthly book choice that often gnaws, just so, on the zeitgeist (I read her eerie June pick, Something in the Water by Catherine Steadman, and it is the thriller of the summer).
But then, a double-down by “Carrie Bradshaw.”
Having long hurrahed a scroll of reads, she just upped the stakes by getting her very own imprint with vaunted publishing house Hogarth.
Celebrity book clubs ... become the ultimate actress accessory (who needs a Birkin?)
Her first pick? A luminous novel, A Place for Us by first timer Fatima Farheen Mirza, a novel that gets the action going when a Muslim-American family gathers for the wedding of their firstborn in California.
In the post-Oprah nexus of social media and publishing — where celebs have millions more followers than the New York Times Book Review, and Instagram is particularly suited to being a sort of “store window” for cover art — it was a first. How? Why? SJP, who grew up in a household with a voraciously reading mother, and herself forever being pap’ed in the streets of New York carting a book, says it all started when a publisher at Crown introduced herself at a party. The next day, she sent the actress a giant parcel of books, including A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra. Parker was overcome with that book and it led to the virtual book group, which eventually led to the imprint.
At first, Parker demurred, thinking it was out of her wheelhouse, but the publishers persisted.
Her taste? “People thought I was going to be publishing what they call ‘chick lit,’ ” she told Porter magazine recently, “but I’ve never read chick lit.” Instead, her goal is to publish things under the canopy of “global voices … books that transport you to far-flung places … exposure to lives I do not know.”
“My father was a writer, my brother is a writer, most of my husband’s best friends are writers,” she adds. Not to mention, of course, she’s spent most of her career channelling other people’s stories.
Some of the other books Parker has championed, by the way?
They include Exit West by Mohsin Hamid, The Nix by Nathan Hill, Ann Patchett’s Commonwealth, Ariel Levy’s The Rules Do Not Apply and Night Thoughts, c/o Wallace Shawn.
In the wide context, it strikes me this is just the latest wave in what’s become a near-constant within the semiotics of Instagram: the book post.
It is why you’re as likely to see Kelly Clarkson posting pictures of Elon Musk’s autobiography (hashtag #Nerdsarecool) as you are Mindy Kaling reclining on a sofa perusing The Hellfire Club by CNN news-dude Jake Tapper (“Guys, if you like political thrillers, this is one,” she raved).
See, too: Alicia Keys, who’s been known to post a whole tower of books, including vintage finds like The Autobiography of Malcolm X, or Olivia Wilde, who boosts everything from manifestos by Naomi Klein to that children’s yarn, The Day the Crayons Quit. Emma Watson has her own book club (it leans feminist). So, too, musician Florence Welch (she’s heralded authors ranging from Joyce Carol Oates to Jonathan Safran Foer). Lena Dunham, natch. And if you’re getting the impression that the vast quorum of famous book-pushers are, indeed, women, you would be right.
They’re leveraging a marketplace where women buy way more books that men, though it does make me think there’s a space for a cool, youngish dude to get in there (hey, maybe one of the Chrises: Evans, Pine, Pratt or Hemsworth).
The only men, I note, who are in the game in a real way are either software billionaires or gay interior whizzes.
Bill Gates, for one, recently promoted William Isaacson’s bio on Leonardo da Vinci by covering his whole face with the book, his neck creeping out from underneath it (it’s one of the tropes of #bookstagram, as it’s called).
Nate Berkus, meanwhile, has an ongoing book club, where he’s dabbled in many interesting choices ( Too Brief a Treat: The Letters of Truman Capote, In Defence of Food by Michael Pollan, etc.).
Even the Book of the Month Club (founded in 1926) began using some notables as “guest judges” as part of its online tilt. These judges promote the books and the club, in turn, promotes them: posts upon reposts.
The range of boldface readers even included the recently departed Anthony Bourdain (his selection was A Gambler’s Anatomy by Jonathan Lethem).
But if the whole phenomenon seems novel (pun intended), think again.
Yes, though some of these celebs are using the levers of technology to spread the gospel of reading while, at the same, giving themselves a B-12 shot of gravitas, image-wise, it is not new, as I discovered when I wound up in a deep dive of Old Hollywood on Google Image.
History is littered with photos — both candid and curated — of vintage stars engrossed in books. Rita Hayworth reading a tome about Lincoln. Marlon Brando in a cosy sweater, on a deck chair, with dog, reading something beguiling of his own. James Dean, likewise, reading with requisite cigarette in one hand. It’s all there.
The most prevailing shots, though, are of Marilyn Monroe, who famously had a personal library of 400 books (and married the playwright Arthur Miller).
Indeed, some of the most famous shots of her were taken by Eve Arnold for Esquire magazine, sitting on a playground on Long Island reading Ulysses!
As far as pictures go it could have been taken yesterday and was definitely #bookstagram before #bookstagram.
Read on, people.
History is littered with photos — both candid and curated — of vintage stars engrossed in books