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There’s a pattern in Read With Jenna’s selections
Literary fiction has emerged as the current beneath Read With Jenna — the genre that appears with the most regularity. It is, after all, the category most likely to deliver literature’s most prestigious publications: winners of the Booker, Pulitzer, and Nobel Prize. Bush Hager’s picks in this realm are varied but share a kinship. “This is a Love Story” by Jessica Soffer, “Groundskeeping” by Lee Cole, and “The Whalebone Theatre” by Joanna Quinn are some standout examples.
But her preferences don’t exist in a vacuum. In 2024, publishers acquired literary fiction titles at a rate that surprised even the optimists — a rebuttal to the idea that fiction must be fast and flashy to be marketable. Even Reese Witherspoon, the reigning queen of commercial romantic reads and genre-branded thrillers, has veered toward the introspective. The best literary fiction picks from Reese’s Book Club suggest a readership that is more willing to sit with the ambitious and ambiguous.
Overlapping her literary fiction picks, Bush Hager has an undeniable soft spot for the bildungsroman, often selecting elliptical coming-of-age stories. Historical fiction and narratives focused on family are also prevalent in the Read With Jenna book club. Bush Hager has dabbled in thrillers and the occasional breezy beach read for your summer reading list. And yet, the highest-rated Read With Jenna pick of all time isn’t any of those. In fact, it isn’t even a novel. It’s “Devotions,” a poetry collection by Mary Oliver. With all the talk of genre, this feels ironic. In a world addicted to plot, readers fell hardest for the pause.
