The Ultimate Read With Jenna Book Club Selection, As Voted By Readers

With all of the incredible novels in the Reading with Jenna catalog, it may seem surprising that the book club’s top title is actually a poetry collection. However, Jenna Bush Hager is a long-time fan of the medium. “When I’m unsure of the world there are a few things I can do: I can go outside and be in nature. I can lean into my faith. Or something else really therapeutic is reading poetry. I am constantly sending poems to friends and family that describe how I’m feeling on certain days,” the host told Today.

Mary Oliver has been a long-time favorite, even before Bush Hager tapped “Devotions” as her book-club selection for December 2024. “I find her poetry to be so cathartic and beautiful,” she added to Today. “It’s about nature and love and what it means to be human.” Based on the collection’s many rave reviews on Goodreads, where the book has a 4.57-star rating, other book lovers agree. “An absolute icon of modern poetry,” wrote one user. “It’s like the sky opening up and all of the cosmos raining down into my heart. … Those looking for an in-depth and expansive look at [Oliver’s] works should certainly turn to ‘Devotions.'”

While Oliver penned many poetry collections — earning accolades like the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award — “Devotions” is among her most special. Not only was it Oliver’s last collection before she passed in 2019, but the career-spanning retrospective was also selected by the poet herself. Most importantly, it’s a book club pick that could speak to almost any reader. As Oliver described poetry on the “On Being with Krista Tippett” podcast in 2015, “It’s very sacred. It wishes for a community — it’s a community ritual, certainly. And that’s why, when you write a poem, you write it for anybody and everybody.”

Is there anything more subjective than someone’s taste in literature? (Case in point, Aubrey Plaza’s favorite books certainly fit her weird-girl vibes.) Calling one book “the best” is always going to spark debate, and the Read with Jenna book club offers up a lot of incredible tomes to choose between, from historical novels and brain-twisting mysteries to poetry collections. So, when it came to selecting a winner from this exalted collection, we had to rely on cold, hard numbers — namely, the books’ Goodreads ratings.

A lot of Jenna Bush Hager’s favorite reads are high-scorers on the literary review site, but “Devotions” leads the pack with its aspirational average of 4.57 stars from nearly 25,000 reviews. In fact, almost 17,000 readers — 67% of all reviewers — gave Mary Oliver’s poetry collection a perfect 5-star rating. That certainly sets a high bar for Bush Hager’s other selections.

For the record, though, a few other books were close on its heels. If you want a few more reads to sink your teeth into, take note: At the time of writing, the second-highest-rated book from the Read with Jenna book club is “Solito” by Javier Zamora, with its 4.48-star average on Goodreads, while “How to Say Babylon” by Safiya Sinclair sits in third place with a 4.44-star average. Now, for more good pages to escape into, here are a few underrated Kindle books you need to read.