Week 7 Prompt - The Power of Celebrity Book Clubs

 It all started with Oprah. I remember when I was little and my mom searching high and low for books that were endorsed by "Oprah's Book Club." Even today, Oprah has a serious amount of pull in terms of book endorsements and recommendations. However, a few more celebrities have joined the efforts now. 

After reading through the article from Variety for this week, I'm still at a loss. To me, having your book endorsed by a celebrity book club is almost a double-edged sword for both the author and the reader. On the one hand, for a book to be not only recommended but endorsed by a celebrity as influential as Oprah or Reese Witherspoon is a big deal, but on the other hand, a part of me wonders how much the general population is reading these books because they truly are great works of literature or simply because a celebrity endorsed them. 

I, personally, don't hold much stock in what celebrity book clubs have to say, because I've been burned too many times by these recommendations. The only "book club" book I have actually read and fully enjoyed was The Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley. But I read that for the mystery aspect and the fact that it was a story about Indigenous people by an Indigenous person, so really, in my opinion there was no downside. However, I have read plenty of others and would definitely classify them as "good premise, bad book." This list includes The House in the Pines by Ana Reyes and Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. On the other hand, most of  the titles just really don't interest me in the slightest. Rarely will you find true crime, truly decent thriller and suspense (that's not James Patterson or Gillian Flynn), or sapphic books. I have noticed a great many of the books that end up on celebrity book lists are the same ones on best sellers lists, which I understand, but I immediately lose interest in a book when it's suddenly "the hot new thing" and that's because those books usually don't hold my interest, because I have a very different reading style compared to most. So lists like this just don't do anything for me.  

For those people that love reading these kinds of books, that's great! I'm glad there are curated lists. This is one benefit I can see of having celebrity book club recommendations - it aids in patron recommendations. I know we have quite a few patrons that come up to the desk and ask for books from Oprah's and Reese Witherspoon's lists, which makes it easy to google and cross-reference in our system. So overall, this is a beneficial reader advisory tool, for the most part.