THIS NOT FOR READING (IT'S A STATUS SYMBOL)
BOOK CLUBS HAVE REACHED CULT STATUS AMONG CELEBRITIES AND DESIGNERS, COVERS HAVE THEIR OWN SOCIAL FOLLOWINGS AND INDEPENDENT PUBLISHERS ARE BOOMING. ALEX HOLDER EXPLORES HOW THE LITERARY WORLD BECAME 2024’S BIGGEST TREND
PAUL MESCAL SITS IN APUB. HE’S ALONE, his phone is charging on the table in front of him, and he’s drinking what could be a gin and tonic but could also be a sparkling water. What matters, though, is that he’s reading. And not just any book: he’s reading the 1965 ‘underrated classic’ Stoner by John Williams. It’s the kind of paperback you want your date to slide into the pocket of their jeans when you arrive at the bar five minutes late. If you were to, say, have a fantasy about Paul Mescal reading topless in bed, you’d probably imagine this book.
Not that I’m suggesting for a moment that Mescal was performatively reading, but there is a certain cultural cachet in being photographed with a book right now. There’s Marc Jacobs taking a selfie while reading not one, but two James Baldwin books in a week (If Beale Street Could Talk and The Fire Next Time); and Kendall Jenner saving her place in Joan Didion’s grief memoir The Year of Magical Thinking as she adjusts her bikini bottoms; Kaia Gerber out walking with a number of books clutched in her hand like accessories, and never placed inside the bag on her shoulder; Emily Ratajkowski wearing merchandise from literary magazine The Paris Review; Dua Lipa holding the novel Trust by Hernan Diaz up to her perfectly painted pout; and Lupita Nyong’o cradling 10 books that helped her heal from heartbreak
(a list that told a story all on its own). Natalie Portman has even created her own style of reading selfie, almost as if she is playing peek-a-boo with a baby; she peers a mischievous single eye over the top of her current book of choice.
And that’s just the celebs. You may have also noticed the colour-coded book arrangements on socials, each of the pages adorned with matching Post-it notes, the girl on the bus sitting next to you uglycrying over A Little Life, another laughing because Sloane Crosley managed to write a funny (and heart-breaking) suicide memoir. The best TV adaptations right now are straight from the bestseller lists (Three Body Problem, One Day, Queenie), and everyone wants you to join their book club (including Kaia Gerber).
We’re undeniably in the age of books, and physical ones at that. In the UK alone, 669 million printed books were sold in 2022, the highest level on record. And this isn’t being driven by older readers – it’s Gen Z (those aged 27 and younger) who are choosing and buying physical books, accounting for 80% of purchases that year. ‘They’re not just buying the books and reading them at home alone either, they’re holding them aloft as status objects, they are scre
