Celebrity Book Styling

Hyper-specific book recommendations for a Hollywood darling!!

How many times have I been mindlessly watching a vlog by a lifestyle creator while doing laundry, and suddenly I hear them say: “I think I’m getting into reading.”? Twice in the last week alone!!!

There’s been an onslaught of media attention on the intersection of books and famous people recently. The likes of Kendall Jenner doublefisting Melissa Broder and (seemingly) tequila, Jacob Elordi reading a book while pumping gas, and the slew of celebrity book clubs… Reading is in!

In a world where we know their skincare routines and bag contents, it’s not so farfetched that our parasocial relationships to influencers and celebrities would extend to being interested in the books they read. While I don’t doubt they are in fact reading, it’s undeniable that they are also aware of being perceived as reading (Exhibit A: Jacob Elordi’s cargo pant pockets). Read or unread, the specificity of the book being toted around is sometimes almost as important as the toting itself.

I think most people want to read something good, but some of those people definitely want to read something that they want to be seen reading (Both can be true! We contain multitudes!).

In Dolly we trust

Now, this isn’t me getting on a little book-shaped soapbox to gatekeep reading—reading is for everyone, reading is sexy, [insert other reading-related t-shirt slogans here]. I think it’s great, but sometimes the book choices are not (if I see one more person talking about reading TERF K Rowling, I’m gonna melt).

Book Notes wrote a piece curating the perfect celebrity book club picks for Sydney Sweeney, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. It reminded me of this article in the NYT Style Magazine from a few years ago about someone who’s a book stylist to the stars. Being hired to cherrypick books for famous people is giving dream job.

It sounds farfetched, but in a world where Ashley Tisdale sends her husband off to a store to buy 400 books in order to fill her shelves before her Architectural Digest home tour, it’s really not all that weird.

Ashley Tisdale for Architectural Digest

A question I get in my TikTok comments about once a week is about how I find books. The answer is so boring: I do the work. Sure, some of my recommendation I get from osmosis (the algorithm I’ve meticulously crafted for myself seeps right into my bloodstream), but mostly it’s research.

How many times have I googled “gay book not sad”? A lot. How many times have I asked a bookseller for a recommendation? Nearly every time I walk into a bookstore. How often do I look at upcoming release catalogues from my favourite publishers? Every season. I’ve sharpened my taste enough that I usually know I’ll enjoy something based on the imprint, the premise, and the blurbs.

My Celebrity Book Stylist™️ credentials are that I read a lot of books and I usually know when an author is a TERF. I want to use this discernment, make assumptions about someone’s taste, and give them hyper-specific book recommendations! Is this a series? Is this a one-off? Only time will tell!

I thought about who I wanted to pick books for, and came up with THE name in about 3 seconds… Ayo Edebiri!

I have loved seeing Ayo’s rise to starlet status in the last few years. This is the part where I don’t say I’ve been on the Ayo train since she popped up on the alt comedy scene in New York City in 2017, because I know it’s insufferable to mention that. She’s everything I want in a Hollywood darling: cool, hot, funny and Irish!

When it comes to her literary taste, I haven’t found much online. In an interview with The Face, she mentions loving Elif Batuman’s The Idiot because she related to the narrator feeling stupid. And in a profile for the NYT, she’s followed into an LA bookstore where she buys a collection of stories by Finnish writer/comic book artist Tove Jansson and Black Food: Stories, Art and Recipes from Across the African Diaspora, a cookbook edited by Bryant Terry. RANGE!

Source: Gabriella Angotti-Jones for The New York Times

Her inclinations are all over the place, but they still feel aligned to who she is. If I had to boil down my impression of what she’d respond to in three words, they would be: smart, funny, and weird.

Smart in the way that Elif Batuman makes you feel stupid. Funny because that is her default setting in the best way. And weird because her sensibilities in terms of projects and the way she presents herself are singularly kooky.

Here are 10 book recommendations I would give Ayo Edebiri:

Luster by Raven Leilani

The biggest reason I would tell her to read this book is because I think she would make a fantastic Edie (the main character) in a movie adaptation of this book. Maybe if she reads it, Hollywood’s ears will perk up. Selfish? Me? Never!

It’s about a woman in her twenties who starts a relationship with a man in his forties and, after getting fired from her job, she moves in with him, his wife and their adopted daughter in the suburbs.

Uncomfortable, messy, honest—this is a hot and sticky book that is so mesmerizing. It’s the style AND substance I think Ayo would respond to!

Beautiful World, Where Are You? by Sally Rooney

I could not not throw an Irish author into the mix. This is the Rooney most people didn’t like, but I think it’s worth giving a chance to!

It’s a story of two friends living in different places who email back and forth, as well as their individual romantic entanglements. The crux of this story is an exploration of friendship and human connection.

There’s an intimacy to the way the book is written that really sings. Sally Rooney writes thoughts and feelings we can all connect to before we’ve ever articulated them ourselves.

All-Night Pharmacy by Ruth Madievsky

This book is so weird, and so good. It’s the kind of book Ayo would get her dose of stress from between filming seasons of The Bear.

It tells the story of two sisters who have a toxic relationship, and what happens to the unnamed narrator when her sibling vanishes. The novel is a fever-dream through drugs, messy entanglements, queerness, sex and mysticism.

This book made me want a new way to say “on the edge of my seat” because of how on the edge I was. It’s exquisitely written, and something I’m excited to revisit again and again.

Nonfiction interlude!

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

This is one of the books I can (and will) recommend to anyone.

It’s a memoir of a queer woman documenting her experience before, during and after an abusive relationship. Carmen Maria Machado threw the classic memoir format out the window and wrote something so genre-bending it’s hard to explain.

This cuts to the core of the author’s experience, while taking the reader on a journey through a creative obstacle course. Brilliant, unlike anything else, and so affecting.

Men by Raven Smith

This is for the Ha Ha Ha girlies! I think Ayo would be giggling through this book like nobody’s business.

It’s a book of essays by Raven Smith, a cool, funny, fashionable person, all about his relationship to men (literally, and conceptually) while being one.

Raven Smith’s voice is razor sharp, witty, engaging, and my god does he nail the comedic essay. He manages to take you on a ride where he makes you laugh, makes you think and sticks the landing with a message all in the span of a dozen pages. I love Raven Smith!

Jane: A Murder by Maggie Nelson

This is part poetry, part coming of age, part true crime, part meditation on personhood—the sum of these parts is a beating heart on the page.

Maggie Nelson’s aunt, Jane, was brutally murdered before her birth. This book is Nelson reckoning with the way this has affected her life. It’s an examination of violence, identity, and the ways the event ripples through their family years later.

Jane: A Murder is just one of the most poignant things I’ve ever read, I cannot recommend it enough.

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

Ayo skewing slightly nonfiction, I would be remiss not to include another earth-shattering memoir from a fellow cool girl.

This book is a coming of age told through loss, grief, family, culture and food. It all ties together in this perfectly balanced way that hurts so good.

It’s such a weird experience to cry your heart out and also feel warm and fuzzy. I think this book should be on all bookshelves.

Chlorine by Jade Song

Weird, gross, heart-wrenching, and an absolute banger. Ayo would eat this up.

This is a coming of age story from a competitive swimmer who genuinely believes she is a mermaid. This isn’t fantastical, rather it exposes a rumination on otherness in a way that feels fully rooted in our narrator’s reality.

This is a story of becoming when you feel like you don’t belong, and it has such gorgeous/disgusting writing. The body horror and anxiety-inducing situations were hard to look away from.

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

This is another book that I could easily recommend to anyone at anytime. I also think because this is a Classic, it has an extra layer of cachet.

Set in 1950s Paris, this follows an American expat, David, who is engaged to a woman but finding himself drawn to a young man he meets. The story of obsession, lust and love devolves into an intricate mess from there.

Giovanni’s Room exposes the realities of queerness in Europe in the 1950s, but also depicts a timeless quest of self-knowledge. It gets better with every read. James Baldwin is a genius.

Penance by Eliza Clark

Ayo feels like a reformed chronically online person who definitely had a huge Tumblr presence and binged the podcast Serial before it blew up. This book hits really hard for those of us who were in the trenches of the internet in the early 2010s.

Penance is a faux true crime recounting of a gruesome murder committed by a trio of young girls when they were in school together. The journalist writing this “definitive account” is a hack and his biases are palpable. Those two things combined make for a fascinating reading experience.

I love this book for the way it pushes the boundaries on what a novel looks and feels like. It’s one of those books that is so layered, but you can still untangle it all for yourself.

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Those were my picks for Ayo!

This was really fun to do. I’m already making suggestions to anyone who will listen, why not shout them into the void for some of my favourite people?? Hopefully it gives other people some ideas along the way!

Ok, TTYL 🩷