What Book Clubs Are Reading in January

This highly anticipated family saga, set during Japan's brutal occupation of Malaysia during WWII, is Good Morning America’s January book club pick. After becoming an unwitting spy for the invading Japanese forces, a Malay mother is forced to reckon with the dire consequences of her actions.

The mission of this virtual club is "to create a forum for members of diverse viewpoints to speak openly about difficult issues in the spirit of free inquiry and understanding—not partisanship." For their January discussion, the club picked this 10-year-old bestselling personal narrative history of Israel, which has experienced a new surge of popularity since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.

Reese’s first selection of the year has “everything you could want in a thriller” and stars a con artist escaping from her past who reinvents herself as the perfect Southern Belle to ensnare her next mark. Witherspoon promised her readers “a cat & mouse game that kept me guessing the whole way through. I did NOT expect that ending…”

Actor Emma Roberts and her co-founder Karah Preiss invite club members to delve into this tender tale about a young Chinese-American woman who drops out of grad school and moves back in with her mom following a devastating breakup. After landing a job at a Bay Area startup specializing in cuddle therapy, she soon discovers that her new life back home isn’t at all what she imagined.

Public radio host Diane Rehm selects this bestseller from one of our most beloved authors, promising that "In the end, the novel is an insightful exploration of young love, marital love, family dynamics, and gratitude for life’s lessons."

Roxane Gay kicks off the year with a beginner-friendly cookbook from the host of Ancient Recipes and the New York Times Cooking YouTube channel that Gay says “offers a welcoming, inventive, and deeply human approach to cooking and life.” Gay also invited her readers for an online event on January 16 where she and the author will whip something up from the book, “If you want to cook along with us, we will be making the Chicken Soup with Masa Dumplings!”

This month’s Read with Jenna selection is the first novel in twelve years from the National Book Award-nominated author of the bestselling Once Upon a River, who’s been called 'the queen of grit lit' and master of 'rural noir.' “If you loved Where the Crawdads Sing, you're going to love, and I'm saying love, our first read of 2024,” promised the Today host.

California Book Club’s January pick is a 1996 memoir from “a quintessential Southern California voice” that reflects on growing up in a post-WWII California suburb. “In 316 brief and careful chapters, he excavates the idea of sacred ordinariness and what it means,” observed Alta Journal.

For January, rapper Noname’s club recommends a landmark 1972 work of African Studies by a Guyanese intellectual that delves into the impact of colonialism and remains essential for understanding global inequality. Bonus: This edition includes a foreword by Angela Davis!

The nonfiction monthly book club picked this journalist and TED talk star’s well-researched examination of the world’s growing attention disorder, that’s been hailed by everyone from Naomi Klein to Hillary Clinton.