As if we couldn’t love Oprah any more than we already do, she’s given us so many truly amazing books that have changed lives, gave us hope, and were just downright guilty pleasures. Oprah revealed her new book for the month and we’re making sure you don’t miss a beat by providing a complete list of all the best books she’s recommended!
Her 3 Most Recent
Oprah first started her official Book Club way back in 1996 and, boy, did she ever get us all reading! A little known fact is that right before she started her official list, she recommended Maryanne Williamson’s “A Return to Love” first. Total game changer.
Since then, Oprah has recommended more than 100 books, many of which were almost complete unknowns and turned around to be all-time best-sellers for the year. These days more and more celebs are making recommendations like Jenna Bush’s Monthly Book Club and even Reese Witherspoon’s Book Picks. While we love both of them, the one thing we know for sure is that you can never go wrong when Oprah makes a recommendation.
Our personal favorite of all time was “The Underground Railroad: A Novel” by Colson Whitehead. It’s gripping, keeps you on the edge of your seat, and painfully forces us to face and understand more of our country’s history. Check that one out here!
The “Book Club. Before. Boys.” Tote Bag – Buy It Here
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A super fun tote bag to carry your books around in…or pretty much anything else you’d like. A total gift-fave for the book lover on your list too. Learn more here!
(Almost) each month Oprah lists out another pick and since her show is no longer on the air (we miss it so much) sometimes a book or two slips through the cracks. We’ll be updating this article with her new book choice each and every time she adds one so you never miss out. Plus we’ll provide you a list of some of her best-sellers that go all the way back to when she started back in ’96. If those books are on sale, you’ll see the price reflected next to each choice. Let’s kick things off!
The Complete 2021 List (So Far)
Your eyes aren’t deceiving you. There are some months missing, but that’s only because a new book wasn’t chosen for that given month. Don’t worry, there are still plenty of great ones to choose from!
Oprah’s New Book / October 2021 /
Bewilderment
Bewilderment by Richard Powers: With its soaring descriptions of the natural world, its tantalizing vision of life beyond, and its account of a father and son’s ferocious love, Bewilderment marks Richard Powers’s most intimate and moving novel. At its heart lies the question: How can we tell our children the truth about this beautiful, imperiled planet? Read more here!
/ August 2021 /
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
The Love Songs of W.E.B Du Bois by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers: To come to terms with her own identity, Ailey embarks on a journey through her family’s past, uncovering the shocking tales of generations of ancestors—Indigenous, Black, and white—in the deep South. In doing so Ailey must learn to embrace her full heritage, a legacy of oppression and resistance, bondage and independence, cruelty and resilience that is the story—and the song—of America itself. Read more here!
/ June 2021 /
The Sweetness of Water
The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris: With candor and sympathy, debut novelist Nathan Harris creates an unforgettable cast of characters, depicting Georgia in the violent crucible of Reconstruction. Equal parts beauty and terror, as gripping as it is moving, The Sweetness of Water is an epic whose grandeur locates humanity and love amid the most harrowing circumstances. Read more here!
/ May 2021 /
Oprah’s new highly-anticipated book is What Happened To You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience and Healing.
What Happened To You? – This book is going to change the way you see your life.
Through this lens we can build a renewed sense of personal self-worth and ultimately recalibrate our responses to circumstances, situations, and relationships. It is, in other words, the key to reshaping our very lives.”―Oprah Winfrey
If you’re interested in learning more you can read more here!
/ April 2021 /
This time around Oprah has chosen 4 (yes, four!) books for the month and all come from the amazing author Marilynne Robinson. The four include: Gilead, Jack, Lila, and Home. Here’s the breakdown and even some sale prices!
Gilead: Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award, Gilead is the long-hoped-for second novel by Marilynne Robinson, one of our finest writers–a hymn of praise and lamentation to the God-haunted existence that Reverend Ames loves passionately, and from which he will soon part. Read more here!
Jack: Robinson tells the story of John Ames Boughton, the prodigal son of Gilead’s Presbyterian minister, and his romance with Della Miles, a high school teacher who is also the child of a preacher. Their deeply felt, tormented, star-crossed interracial romance resonates with all the paradoxes of American life, then and now. Read more here!
Lila: Lila, homeless and alone after years of roaming the countryside, steps inside a small-town Iowa church-the only available shelter from the rain-and ignites a romance and a debate that will reshape her life. She becomes the wife of a minister, John Ames, and begins a new existence while trying to make sense of the life that preceded her newfound security. Read more here!
Home: Home is a moving and healing book about families, family secrets, and the passing of the generations, about love and death and faith. It is Robinson’s greatest work, an unforgettable embodiment of the deepest and most universal emotions. Read more here!
The Complete 2020 List
August 2020 / Caste
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions. Read more here!
June 2020 / Deacon King Kong
From James McBride, author of the National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird and the bestselling modern classic The Color of Water, one of the most anticipated novels of the year: a wise and witty tale about what happens to the witnesses of a shooting. Read more here!
April 2020 / Hidden Valley Road
The heartrending story of a midcentury American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science’s great hope in the quest to understand the disease. Read more here!
January 2020 / American Dirt
American Dirt will leave readers utterly changed. It is a literary achievement filled with poignancy, drama, and humanity on every page. It is one of the most important books for our times. Already being hailed as “a Grapes of Wrath for our times” and “a new American classic,” Jeanine Cummins’s American Dirt is a rare exploration into the inner hearts of people willing to sacrifice everything for a glimmer of hope. Read more here!
List of Popular Best Sellers
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The List of Oprah’s Favorite Things for Christmas
The October 2021 LA Times Book Club Pick is Here!
The October 2021 B&N Book Club Complete List
The Best Books on Racism, Race & Education in 2021
The Kendall Jenner Book Club Pick in October 2021
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