Blog Post

Celebrity Book Picks from Dua Lipa & Janelle Monáe

Hayley DenningsJan 9 2024

You can find out a lot about a person just by looking at the books they like to read. The same applies to celebrities, of course, and if you’re ever wondering what’s going on in their heads, maybe try reading their favorite books. Here is a list of book recommendations from some celebrities we love! Dua Lipa loves “A Little Life” by Hanya Yanagihara, which follows a group of college friends and the relationships they attempt to maintain amongst tumultuous life changes and trauma. She even says “it challenged everything I thought I knew about love.” Janelle Monáe mentioned “Wild Seed” by Octavia Butler being one of the most influential books in her life. The book is a moving story of love and hate, following the chase between two immortals to bind their fates, spanning continents and centuries. Monáe also loved “Brave New World,” the dystopian classic by Aldous Huxley, and has mentioned (as reported by Consequence of Sound) loving science fiction for being “an exciting and new way of telling universal stories.” Constance Wu considers “Bad Feminist” by Roxanne Gay to be one of her favorite books of all time. The collection of essays discusses politics, criticism, and feminism. She’s also mentioned how “Middlemarch” by George Eliot became a favorite book of hers after reading it for her Victorian lit class.

A Little Life

By Hanya Yanagihara

Four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—move to New York, held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma.

Wild Seed

By Octavia E. Butler

In an epic story of love and hate, two immortals chase each other across continents and centuries, binding their fates together -- and changing the destiny of the human race.

Bad Feminist

By Roxane Gay

A collection of essays spanning politics, criticism, and feminism from one of the most-watched cultural observers of her generation.

Middlemarch

By George Eliot

Middlemarch tells the intertwined stories of a variety of people living in the vicinity of the (fictional) midlands town of Middlemarch during the early 1830s, the time of the great Reform Act.

Brave New World

By Aldous Huxley

Influenced by the historic events of Huxley’s era yet as relevant today as ever, Brave New World is a remarkable depiction of the conflict between progress and the human spirit.

Keep reading on Fable

The Fable app is built for social reading, with tools for sharing highlights, comments, insights, links, pictures, and videos as you set measurable reading goals. We also make it easy to launch your free book club, even if you are reading an audiobook. With our platform, you can host every aspect of an online discussion at a single destination to reach readers and build safe online communities regardless of location or time zone.

Hayley Dennings is a queer, Black woman from the Bay Area in California. While finishing her French and English undergraduate degree from Loyola Marymount University, she also spends time on her YouTube channel, Pages of Hayley, where she discusses books and writing with over 45,000 subscribers. Because of reading, Hayley learns about experiences other than her own and gains empathy for those around her. Seeing people like her represented in books encouraged her to write her own books and pursue publishing. When Hayley is not working, she is spending time with her three dogs and baking.