As if Dua Lipa hadn’t done enough for pop culture, she has, for several years now, been taking the world of literature by storm. In 2023, she started a book club under the moniker of her culture newsletter, Service 95 – and since then has proved to be, as well as a pop star, something of a literary darling. Each month, she recommends a book, makes a podcast about it and encourages millions of others to join in the conversation.
If this initially makes you cynical, just look back to the 2000s and remind yourself that pop stars could do a lot worse in terms of setting an example. Plus, Lipa’s picks are far from fluffy (she famously met her husband, James Bond contender Callum Turner, when they noticed at a dinner they were both reading the same book, by Hernan Diaz). Instead, you’ll find hidden gems and fat modern classics, all inspiring you to pick up a book instead of your phone.
Setting aside the truly obvious classics from Lipa’s three-year-long list – A Thousand Splendid Suns, The Handmaid’s Tale, 100 Years of Solitude, recent Booker winner – I have picked the 11 best of the rest.
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk
This tightly woven, quasi-atmospheric novel by the Nobel Prize winner is unforgettable. Set in a village on the Polish-Czech border in the depths of winter, it takes us deep inside the mind of Janina, a woman in her sixties who is passionate about animal rights and William Blake and who makes it her mission to investigate a series of mysterious deaths in the local area. It will be on every 21st-century classics list of the future.
Fitzcarraldo Editions, £9.99
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
Ishiguro’s bittersweet dystopia is the Service 95 pick this month, just as the movie version hits cinemas. Though the film, starring Jenna Ortega, has been generally poorly received, Ishiguro’s novel, published in 2021, remains melancholic and profound – and highly prescient for our AI-addled age. Klara, a solar-powered “artificial friend”, becomes deeply empathetic of Josie, a teenager suffering a serious illness – and we are left wondering what, or who, is real.
Faber & Faber, £9.99
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
This 2006 novel deservedly became the breakthrough for the Nigerian writer Ngozi Adichie, earning her international success. Set in the Nigerian civil war in the 1960s, it follows a cast of intertwined characters whose lives are changed by the conflict. The book teaches us not only about the violence and trauma endured in the fight to establish the Republic of Biafra – whose flag gives the book its title – but of the tragedies and intimacies of family, loss, and love.
Fourth Estate, £10.99
Grief is the Thing With Feathers by Max Porter
Max Porter’s tight debut novella is a stark, simple account of what is perhaps life’s most painful experience: mourning the death of a loved one. It follows a widowed father and his two young sons following the sudden death of their mother; in their grief, they are visited by a giant anthropomorphic crow, who gradually helps them to heal. Inspired by Ted Hughes’ poetry collection , it has as much substance as style.
Faber & Faber, £9.99
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
Perhaps it made an unusually strong impression because of Covid, but 2020’s Booker winner is one of the Prize’s most memorable of recent years. A story of family, identity and poverty in Glasgow in the 1980s, Stuart’s exploration of his central character, Shuggie, who is queer and highly sensitive and struggling to look after his alcoholic mother, is tender and tragic.
Picador, £10.99
The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
Paul Murray’s epic bestseller centres around the 2008 financial crash – but expands into a family history of huge proportions, encompassing not only the immediate repercussions of that devastating time but the consequences of generational trauma and the fault lines of communication between close relations. The Barneses are an ordinary, seemingly nuclear family living in a small town in Ireland, but we are soon reminded that everybody has their own struggles – and secrets.
Penguin, £10.99
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
It’s no mean feat for a young writer to be compared to Toni Morrison, but earned Brit Bennett that honour. Another exploration of a complex family history, the novel unfolds over four decades, from the 1950s to the 1990s. Two identical twin sisters grow up in a town in Louisiana consisting of light-skinned black people; when they run away to New Orleans, their paths diverge as white-passing Stella chooses to live as a white person, while Desiree embraces her blackness.
Dialogue Books, £10.99
Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash
Funny and surreal, follows the plight of three very different sisters. While their parents are off trying to fix their marriage by opening it up, the lack of attention leads them into all manner of situations. One gets inadvertently involved in a terrorism plot, one starts going out with some dodgy old guy (War Crime Wes) and the youngest tries to solve a local mystery. You won’t have read anything like it.
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
Apollo, £9.99
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
This 2021 bestselling memoir sees Michelle Zauner, best known as the lead singer of the indie band Japanese Breakfast, reconnecting with her Korean heritage. After her mother dies of cancer, Zauner teaches herself to cook traditional Korean dishes and shops in the Asian supermarket H Mart, where sounds, sights and smells evoke strong memories of her mother. Processing her grief one dish at a time, Zauner doesn’t shy away from the more complex elements of their relationship: a raw and visceral read.
Picador, £10.99
Just Kids by Patti Smith
The iconic Patti Smith here documents her formative relationship with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, painting a stark, colourful picture of 1970s New York City in the process. The pair met in Brooklyn in the late 1960s and lived together as artists and lovers, completely broke, embedded in the counterculture and running riot with the likes of Janis Joplin and Andy Warhol, their bond ultimately becoming platonic. Mapplethorpe died of Aids in 1989 – the book is a tribute to his memory.
Bloomsbury, £12.99
And the worst…
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
This much-hyped 2019 novel had its moment in the sun – but a few years on, it feels painfully of its time. An autofictional musing on identity, framed as a young Vietnamese man’s letter to his illiterate mother, it is sometimes poetic to the point of pretension.
Vintage, £9.99