Jenna Bush Hager had no idea that her book club would blow up when she first launched it on the Today show in March 2019. But when it did, it quickly became one of the coanchor's favorite parts of her job — after all, she's been an avid bibliophile pretty much her entire life.
"My earliest memories are laying in bed before I went to sleep with my parents reading to Barbara [Jenna's sister] and I," Jenna tells Good Housekeeping. "To this day, the sound of an audio book will still put me to sleep because I associate it with them reading to me."
Well before she became a household name on the Today show, Jenna remembers watching her dad and mom, former President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush, thumbing through books on their sides of the bed. According to Jenna, any free time they had was used to catch up on their reading.
As a child, Jenna especially fell in love with Little Women, James and the Giant Peach, the Goosebump series, and, of course, all of The Baby-Sitters Club books. Now, however, as the leader of an ever-growing book club, she feels responsible for also highlighting the works of lesser-known authors. But whether the books are best-sellers or not, Jenna has a set criteria when evaluating what to recommend.
"No matter what, you have to have a great, compulsively readable plot. Something where you cannot wait to figure out what's going to happen," Jenna explains. "And, obviously, I was an English major so it has to be beautifully well-written."
Which books have made the cut? Scroll down to get the full list of Jenna-approved picks: