OPEN POST: With The Peckerwood Book Club, Plus Celeb Recommendations And Douglas Stewart's "John of John!"!

Greetings hors, and welcome to Monday's Open Post and The Peckerwood Book Club - combined! Can you believe? We can do that, you know. It's allowed. 

Meanwhile, take note, in 2026, there are over a dozen active celebrity book clubs and counting, everything from Oprah's long-reigning club to Natalie's Book Club curated by Natalie Portman to TeamTime hosted by Dakota Johnson to Service95 run by DuaLipa. That's a lot of recommendations and a lot of books. Do you take their recommendations seriously? Or are you like Jonathan Franzen, who refused to have his book included as a 2001 Oprah Book Club pick because he found her selections overall to be "schmaltzy" and "one dimensional"?

They reconciled a decade later, but the point was made. Book club celebs aren't universally loved, and they aren't always the best pickers. The latter point was made by Oprah (again) when she selected Jeanine Cummins' 2020 novel "American Dirt" as her latest selection, only to face intense backlash given its broadly stereotypical representation of its Mexican characters - the author is Caucasian - and accusations of racism. It wasn't the best look for Oprah or Flatiron, the book's publisher, which cancelled the author's book tour. 

Is Oprah immune to broadly stereotypical representation of Mexicans? I'm going to venture forth with a "no," which inevitably leads to a broader fact: Oprah and her fellow book club celebs do not always pick and may not even read the books they recommend. The top publishing companies instead trot forth a curated selection of what they perceive to be their monthly best, then let the book club staffers fight over them (Oprah’s club surely get first pick). This is how you end up with Oprah allegedly recommending "American Dirt," which the mostly Caucasian publishing world deemed to be the "hottest" of the new bunch. Other book clubs have their own ulterior motives, like Reese Witherspoon's, acting as a way for stars to gauge the popularity of material they might make into movies. In other words, you are their unpaid test market employees for the books they're pushing. 

Do you pay attention to celebrities when they recommend books? They're hard to ignore - and they give the authors a nice bump of publicity - but I generally look away from them and rely on reviews from other sources I trust. 

But lo, the literary novel I'm heartily recommending today is a book club pick...by none other than Oprah (or someone on her staff). I know, I know, but if it helps, I was initially drawn to the Ann Patchett recommendation, who's own book club has never led me wrong. 

In this stunning, heart-wrenching coming-of-age scenario, Cal, a closeted youth, returns from college in London to his rural Scottish home in the 1990s, not realizing that his embittered widowed father, John, has lived for decades as a closeted man. And that's just the set-up. In addition to its powerfully-drawn characters, the novel has an unusually tactile sense of time and place, painting a sometimes bleak, yet always absorbing, portrait of a village morally ensnared by the Church, the past and their own stark traditions. The drama unfolds without rush, allowing you to become fully engrossed in the growing conflicts between Cal and his father’s strict Catholicism. 

All the characters make an indelible impression, including Cal, who doesn’t see a path toward coming out after returning from college, much less finding his own way forward as an adult. Ensnared by his father’s severe rule and disapproval, along with the town’s suffocating Catholic church, he fumbles - sometimes with near-disastrous results, as when he makes a furtive move on Innes, his father’s best friend, and unbeknownst to Cal, his secret lover. Throughout, Cal’s struggles feel real, which includes his relationship with Isla, a young woman whom the town has long-expected Cal to marry. In all the ways that count, she’s just as trapped by the town’s conventional Catholic expectations as he is and soon acts out against them.

As for Ella, Cal's maternal grandmother, she can at times seem too predictably drawn as the wise, salty-mouthed elder with a heart of gold, yet she soon wins you over, especially in terms of her genuinely sweet relationship with Cal. She, too, finds herself stymied, as she’s one of the few in town who’s refused to kowtow to the Church, one of the quietest radical acts in all of "John of John." Written by former Booker Prize winner Douglas Stewart, this is one of the finest literary novel's I've read in some time, one I can recommend to just about anyone without hesitation, so make sure and reserve it at your local library or you can buy it RIGHT HERE. 

What are you reading these days? Be sure to recommend a few good picks as you mingle and kibbitz and drink to excess in the Open Post, because the Manor's Bibliophile Bendy Boy™ is looking for hot new reads and you don't want to disappoint him, do you? 

Photo Credit: Grove Press