Looking for one last good read before the holiday madness? We looked at the first choices of the 8 best-known celebrity book clubs and lists to share influential readers' favorite books of 2023. These books made great impressions on movie stars (Reese Witherspoon, Emma Watson), television tastemakers (Shonda Rimes, Jenna Bush Hager), former presidents (Barack Obama), social media stars (Belletrist Book Club) and, of course, Oprah Winfrey, the multimedia megastar book booster whose branded club editions have sold an estimated 55 million copies since she started her on-air recommendations in 1996. We're featuring selections from these their top choices, and featuring their next-favorite read if No. 1 is already listed by another luminary of literary lists.

Oprah's Book Club

"The Covenant of Water," by Abraham Verghese. Oprah's named 103 books as great reads in her widely followed book club, but few drew her praise like this sprawling multigenerational family saga set in Kerala, India: "It is one of the best books I have read in my entire life, and I have been reading since I was 3!"

Reese's Book Club

"Yellowface," by R.F. Kuang. "What Does It Mean to Own or Steal a Story?" the author asks in the club's "Dear Reader" letter. Kuang skewers the literary landscape in this novel, but not just for laughs. "What is authenticity? What do we owe the people we are writing about? What happens when we foreground authorial identity above all else-when we, for instance, pigeonhole Asian American writers as Asian before they are writers?

"For what it's worth, I don't think there are easy or obvious answers to these questions, and I remain suspicious of anyone who claims there are."

#ReadWithJenna

"Camp Zero," by Michelle Min Sterling. Today show co-host Jenna Bush Hager touted this near-future environmental dystopian novel in April, saying she tore through Sterling's debut novel, and found a hopeful note in the climate change-created environment of far northern Canada, where three storylines converge: a woman code-named Rose trying to infiltrate the mysterious camp to seduce and disrupt the architect of a futuristic society, an all-female troop of survivalists, and a privileged young man seeking an escape from the pressures of his storied family name. Hager finds some home in the solidarity of the women perched on the edge of the warming world. "They work together to do the most amazing things. It's about how women can come together to change the world ... which I believe in," she says. "The ending of this book is incredible."

Noname Book Club

Chicago rapper Fatimah Warner, aka Noname, created this Black-led worker cooperative to connect POC readers "both inside and outside carceral facilities with radical books." While many selections reach back through history, the September nod to "Vagabonds," by Nigerian writer Eloghosa Osunde was the group's most timely pick of 2023. This "brave, fiercely inventive novel traces a wild array of characters for whom life itself is a form of resistance: a driver for a debauched politician with the power to command life and death; a legendary fashion designer who gives birth to a grown daughter; a lesbian couple whose tender relationship sheds unexpected light on their experience with underground sex work; a wife and mother who attends a secret spiritual gathering that shifts her world."

Belletrist Book Club

Best friends actress Emma Roberts and producer/writer Karah Preiss took their text message-based recommendations to the social media universe when their discussions started gathering followers. Now they sprinkle their literary likes across Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and their own site, where August pick "My Husband," by French writer Maud Ventura was called a "suspenseful and darkly funny debut novel," in which "a sophisticated French woman spends her life obsessing over her perfect husband--but can their marriage survive her passionate love?"

Barack Obama's Summer Reading List

With more time for books since he left the Oval Office, the former president's summer reading lists cover a wide range of choices, in both fiction and nonfiction. The magisterial biography, "King: A Life," by Jonathan Eig, gets the Obama seal of approval, and found its way onto the year's best book lists at the Washington Post, the New York Times, Publishers Weekly and Smithsonian magazine. It's the first biography to draw from the extensive FBI files on the civil rights leader, which were recently declassified.

Kaia Gerber's Book Club

The pandemic sent plenty of people to their libraries, and produced some surprising champions of literature. Kaia Gerber, the daughter of Cindy Crawford, uses Instagram as a platform for her faves, including the haunting WWI queer love story "In Memoriam," by Alice Winn. Gerber enjoyed it so much she stepped up her production schedule for her low-tech talk with the author. "I read this book and I wanted to do it now, and I got impatient, so, I'm sorry - and, you're also welcome," says the Gen Z model, actress and cheerfully informal literary critic. "I was so pleasantly blown away, and it's kind of hard to believe that it's her debut novel."

Shondaland

In addition to shaping the tone and look of prestige television and feature films, showrunner, producer and screenwriter Shonda Rimes is another discerning celeb book fan. The website for her production company, Shondaland, will take deep dives, speaking to authors in depth and exploring all kinds of new books. Earlier this months, Stephanie Land, author of "Maid," got personal and pointed discussing her second memoir, "Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education." Her first book described cleaning mansions while living in poverty as a single mother escaping an emotionally abusive partner, and Land still struggles with squaring her tough history with her growing success. "I do deserve what I've worked hard for," she says. "It's really hard for me to say that out loud; this might be the first time I've said it."

In a busy world where even dedicated readers struggle to set time aside for books, never mind finding good books to peruse, the peculiar symbiosis of celebrities sharing their own literary enthusiasms and a publishing industry crimped by reduced promotional budgets has created an unexpectedly relatable aspect of fandom. You don't have to be famous to pick up a book, but if you're famous, you can inspire people to read them.