Jenna Bush Hager Gives a Sneak Peek of Next Month's Book Club Pick (Exclusive)

Jenna Bush Hager at the Read with Jenna 5-Year Anniversary Party

After Jenna Bush Hager started as a co-host of the fourth hour of NBC’s Today show in 2019, it didn’t take long for her to leave her mark. She simply found her bookmark.

A passionate reader whose love of literature runs deep in her esteemed family—her late grandmother, former First Lady Barbara Bush, loved her needlepoint pillow that read “Reading is Sexy,” and her mother, former First Lady Laura Bush, was a librarian— Hager decided to start a book club. She called it Read with Jenna.

Five years later, the program is popular beyond her vivid imagination. Think 41 New York Times bestsellers, with 32 optioned for TV and film. She signed a first-look production deal with Universal Studio Group and created her own production company, Thousand Voices. The #ReadwithJenna hashtag has an audience of 250,000 followers on Instagram. “It’s like living a wild, wild dream,” she tells Parade.

Hager celebrated the anniversary with a cocktail party on Feb. 29 at the downtown New York City café bar Bibliotheque (which, fittingly, doubles as a bookstore during the day). Aside from book industry insiders and authors, her fellow Today show hosts Savannah Guthrie, Hoda Kotb and Dylan Dreyer (as well as her twin sister, Barbara) were on-hand to support her and marvel at her accomplishments.

“She’s a worker bee,” Guthrie tells Parade. “She goes and does the show and then spends the next 12 hours taking meetings, reading books, talking to authors and considering every single submission. It’s not easy, and it’s not effortless.”

Related: Savannah Guthrie on Why She Wrote New Faith-Based Book

Dreyer notes that Hager does it all on top of being a mom of three (to Mila, 10, Poppy, 8 and Hal, 4): “I also have three children and maybe get a chapter or two in a night before I fall asleep because I’m totally spent. But she makes time to read the books, and that is hard. I give her a lot of credit.”

Hager, by the way, also spent the day sick in bed with stomach issues and had to miss the Feb. 29 broadcast. But she recovered with a smile and talked exclusively about her literary successes with Parade.

When you started Read with Jenna, what was your best-case scenario?

The best-case scenario was that I’d get to read for my job. But I wasn’t like, “Let’s create a wildly successful club and have 40-plus New York Times bestsellers.” That wasn’t the hope. I just wanted to share my love of reading with our audience.

At what point did you realize the club was catching on?

The first book! It was The Last Romantics by Tara Conklin. My boss texted me, “Holy moly, that book just shot from oblivion to No. 1 on Amazon!” So we realized right away that we had an audience. I mean, the Today show has a great audience. But I think people also trusted that I loved to read because I had talked about it for so many years that I had appeared on the show.

What’s the most gratifying part? Seeing results with all those bestsellers?

No, I think it’s listening to the conversations that our readers are having online. They don’t know each other and many of them have not even met in person. But I love hearing them talk about how these books have changed them. Some of the books have nothing to do with their lives. Their life experiences are quite different from what they’re reading. They’re quite different from how I live. But what I’ve found is that we have so much that unites us. That humanity and those conversations have been amazing.

Why the emphasis on new books over the classics? Is there any pressure?

It’s not pressure. We’ve done mostly new books, but we’ve also chosen legacy writers. We re-released Judy Blume’s Summer Sisters and re-released The Secret History from Donna Tartt. Toni Morrison’s son came to us in 2020 and asked if we wanted to re-release the paperback of The Bluest Eye in honor of its 50^th anniversary. And actually, for this month coming up, we have the re-release of a famous old book that I just adore.

What are you like in bookstores?

I get ADD. I’m completely like, “Ooh, I’ve read that one. Oh my gosh, I haven’t read the new James McBride.” I get lost in a bookstore, which is fun. But when I go through bookstores or airports, it’s also fun to see the Read with Jenna selections.

Where does Read with Jenna go from here?

I think we’re just really excited about each month. But in five years, I think you’ll be seeing some of these books that we’re adapting be on television. That would be amazing because we’re working incessantly on it.

Will you get to literally play a role?

Well, as a kid, I did wish to be a child star! So maybe that’s a good idea. But all I care about is that they actually get made. So if throwing me a cameo messes something up, forget it!

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