The Read With Jenna Book Club Pick That's So Different From All The Rest

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The best picks from the Read With Jenna book club consist of family-oriented literary fiction and beautiful memoirs, with avid readers knowing that the celebrity reading group also favors thrill-filled mysterious and classically-written coming-of-age stories. While it's clear that Jenna Bush Hager and her readers have their genre preferences, the "Today" host isn't afraid to make some riskier selections when it comes to her monthly picks. While she unexpectedly platformed a popular romance book that doubles as a Read With Jenna favorite, Hager also changed things up by selecting a poetry collection for December 2024. 

The former first daughter highlighted "Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver" as the book club's end-of-year pick, emphasizing the poignant qualities of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author's writing. "'Devotions' is a collection of over 200 of [Oliver's] most beautiful poems, full of reflections on nature, love, and what it means to be human," Hager wrote on Instagram. In addition to being quite the genre deviation and ranking as the highest rated title from the Read With Jenna catalogue, this poetic pick also stands out for sentimental reasons.

While "Devotions" by Mary Oliver sticks out from the rest of the Read With Jenna reading list genre-wise, Jenna Bush Hager has emphasized the special place that poetry has in her life. "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," she told Today. "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." With its exploration of the physical world and interconnectedness, it's not surprising that the TV personality resonates so deeply with this lyrical collection.

Beyond this, Hager shared that both of her grandmothers loved poetry throughout her childhood, with the former first daughter having special memories tied to Oliver's work. "Her words take me back to childhood memories of lying under the stars with my grandmother Jenna, who would read her poems to me," she wrote via Instagram. "When my grandmother passed in 2019, I read Oliver's 'When I Am Among the Trees' at her funeral—a poem that will always remind me of her." Though this isn't the first time that Hager has highlighted a title connected to her early life, it's clear that this uniqueness of "Devotions" by Mary Oliver extends to her personal connection with the work.