So I got to researching. I wanted to find celebrities who read widely across many genres, and I also wanted to find a celebrities who search for diverse voices in their reading lives. Ultimately, these are the celebrities whose reading recommendations made the cut. Here’s a look at celebrities who read diversely and the books they recommend. Oh, and if you are interested to see this experiment through to the next stage, I will be doing a follow-up where I read the books that one of these celebrities recommended and I’ll officially judge their reading tastes. So stay tuned! I’d like to make a quick note that all of the people on this list are women and/or BIPOC celebrities. So white men, once again, I’m going to need you to do better. Kaling has recommended quite a few books over the years. Some highlights: The Lowland and In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri, The Year of Yes by Shonda Rimes, and What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami. Kaling has even recommended her favorite cookbook: Cravings by Chrissy Teigen. Some of Noah’s favorites include Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela, Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, To Quote Myself: A Memoir by Khaya Dlanga, and Native Life in South Africa by Sol Plaatje. Oh, and if you’ve somehow made it to 2022 and haven’t read Trevor Noah’s memoir Born A Crime yet, what are you doing? Read it now. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. Ten out of five stars. Some highlights from the near 100 books Watson has recommended include Hunger and Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay, What I Know For Sure by Oprah Winfrey, The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami, and A Thousand Splendid Suns and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseni. Here are some books from diverse voices that you must read if you want to read like Nigella Lawson: The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, Whipping Girl by Julia Serrano, and Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid. Berry’s reading recommendations will take you to plenty of diverse places. Here are some of her favorites: Nappily Ever After by Trisha R. Thomas, The Rumi Collection, edited by Kabir Helminski, Some Love, Some Pain, Sometime by J. California Cooper, and The Color of Water by James McBride. Some of Ali Wong’s favorite books include Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng, Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo, and Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. Yes, that’s right. That’s a second celebrity endorsement for Homegoing. In an article for Vulture, Yara Shahidi recommended The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, The Devils Finds Work by James Baldwin, and Christopher Paul Curtis’ Bud, Not Buddy, which Shahidi says “should be mandatory reading.” Reese Witherspoon has recommended over 50 books through her book club, including Seven Days in June by Tia Williams, The Last Story of Mina Lee by Nancy Jooyoun Kim, You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson, Such A Fun Age by Kiley Reid, and Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng. If you’re counting, yes, that’s two votes for Little Fires Everywhere. Of course, Reese Witherspoon also has her own book as well. So if you need even more Reese in your life, check out Whiskey in a Teacup. Here are some of the noteworthy books that Oprah has championed over the years: The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris, Caste by Isabel Wilkerson, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende, and multiple novels by Toni Morrison: Song of Solomon, Sula, Paradise, and The Bluest Eye. Yes, that’s two celebrity votes for The Blues Eye. Want more celeb content? Check out these 8 celebrity novels to add to your TBR. And here’s a look at the history of the celebrity book. Last but not least, here are 15 books recommended by celebrities.
