Celebrity Book Club Picks for November 2021

Hi everyone!  Today I’m sharing my monthly feature highlighting the Celebrity Book Club Picks for the month.  These book clubs are internet-based and open to all who follow.  So if you’re like me and always on the lookout for the next great read, you will now find these picks all in one spot – That Happy Reader’s blog!

So without further adieu, let me introduce you to four book clubs and reveal their picks for November 2021.

Good Morning America’s Book Club

The GMA Book Club is officially called “Cover to Cover” and was started in the Fall of 2019. Their selections highlight diversity and books are chosen from both fiction and non-fiction genres. The book club chose “Still Life” by Sarah Winman as their November 2021 pick.

From The Publisher:

Tuscany, 1944: As Allied troops advance and bombs fall around deserted villages, a young English soldier, Ulysses Temper, finds himself in the wine cellar of a deserted villa. There, he has a chance encounter with Evelyn Skinner, a middle-aged art historian who has come to Italy to salvage paintings from the ruins and recall long-forgotten memories of her own youth. In each other, Ulysses and Evelyn find a kindred spirit amongst the rubble of war-torn Italy, and set off on a course of events that will shape Ulysses’s life for the next four decades.
As Ulysses returns home to London, reimmersing himself in his crew at The Stoat and Parrot — a motley mix of pub crawlers and eccentrics — he carries his time in Italy with him. And when an unexpected inheritance brings him back to where it all began, Ulysses knows better than to tempt fate, and returns to the Tuscan hills.
With beautiful prose, extraordinary tenderness, and bursts of humor and light, Still Life is a sweeping portrait of unforgettable individuals who come together to make a family, and a richly drawn celebration of beauty and love in all its forms.

Published: November 2, 2021 by G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 464 pages

Genres: General Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction

Add Still Life to your Goodreads shelf

Oprah’s Book Club

Oprah Winfrey started this book club in 1996 as a segment on her TV show. Many obscure titles have risen to bestseller status as a result of her picks.

The book club did not pick a new book for November 2021.

Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club (Hello Sunshine)

Founded in 2017, Hello Sunshine always chooses books with women at the centre of the story. Their website notes “We make our choices thoughtfully and look for ways to deepen our connection to books, authors and ourselves”.  This book club chose “The Island of Missing Trees” by Elif Shafak as their November 2021 pick.

From The Publisher:

Two teenagers, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, meet at a taverna on the island they both call home. In the taverna, hidden beneath garlands of garlic, chili peppers and creeping honeysuckle, Kostas and Defne grow in their forbidden love for each other. A fig tree stretches through a cavity in the roof, and this tree bears witness to their hushed, happy meetings and eventually, to their silent, surreptitious departures. The tree is there when war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to ashes and rubble, and when the teenagers vanish. Decades later, Kostas returns. He is a botanist looking for native species, but really, he’s searching for lost love.
Years later, a Ficus carica grows in the back garden of a house in London where Ada Kazantzakis lives. This tree is her only connection to an island she has never visited – her only connection to her family’s troubled history and her complex identity as she seeks to untangle years of secrets to find her place in the world.
A moving, beautifully written and delicately constructed story of love, division, transcendence, history and eco-consciousness, The Island of Missing Trees is Elif Shafak’s best work yet.

Published: August 5, 2021 by Viking, 368 pages

Genre: General Fiction

Add The Island of Missing Trees to your Goodreads shelf

Read With Jenna (Jenna Bush Hager)

Starting in March 2019, the former First Daughter announced her book club on the Today show.  Each month she chooses a book that is sure to generate discussion.  Jenna chose “The Family” by Naomi Krupitsky as her November 2021 pick.

From The Publisher:

In the vein of an American Elena Ferrante, a captivating debut novel about the tangled fates of two best friends and daughters of the Italian mafia, and a coming-of-age story of twentieth-century Brooklyn.
Two daughters. Two families. One inescapable fate.
Sofia Colicchio is a free spirit, a loud, untamed thing. Antonia Russo is thoughtful, ever observing the world around her. Best friends from birth, their homes share a brick wall and their fathers are part of an unspoken community that connects them all: the Family. Sunday dinners gather the Family each week to feast, discuss business, and renew the intoxicating bond borne of blood and love.
Until Antonia’s father dares to dream of a different life and goes missing soon after. His disappearance drives a whisper-thin wedge between Sofia and Antonia as they become women, wives, mothers, and leaders, all the while maintaining a complex and at times conflicted friendship. Both women are pushing against the walls of a prison made up of expectations, even as they remain bound to one another, their hearts expanding in tandem with Red Hook and Brooklyn around them. One fateful night their loyalty to each other and the Family will be tested. Only one of them can pull the trigger before it’s too late.

Published: November 2, 2021 by G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 368 pages

Genre: Historical Fiction

Add The Family to your Goodreads shelf

So that’s what Celebrity Book Clubs are reading in November 2021.  Do any of these books appeal to you?  Will your book club be selecting any of these books? Let me know in the comments.

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Previous Book Club Picks:

Celebrity Book Club Picks for October 2021

Celebrity Book Club Picks for September 2021