The pandemic summer means we’ve all got some extra reading time, which may be why Today show co-host Jenna Bush Hager picked two books for her popular book club.
Hager selected Ella Berman’s The Comeback and R. Eric Thomas’ Here for It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America as the latest picks for her club. Berman’s novel follows a young movie star who was bullied and molested early in her career, while Thomas’ essay collection focuses on his experiences growing up Black and queer.
Hager called The Comeback “the perfect summer read.”
“This beautifully written and compulsively readable book broke me from my pandemic blockage,” Hager said. “Even though it’s about something so heartbreaking, I wasn’t left desperate.”
Hager’s selection of Here for It was a collaboration with Noelle Santos, the owner of The Lit Bar, an independent bookstore in The Bronx.
“I knew [Santos] would have ideas on books that we can read as a club that would help us open our minds,” Hager said.
Thomas said he hoped his book would be a conversation starter for Hager’s book club members.
“The book is, I hope, like a conversation with a good friend at brunch, that’s the way I always imagined it,” Thomas told the Today show. “I haven’t been to brunch in, like, four months, so I think a lot of people are like, ‘If I can’t be out in the world, at least we get to have this conversation in book form.’”
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
