Loved This Year’s Oprah’s Book Club Picks? Here’s What You Should Read Next

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All year, Oprah’s Book Club has been reading together, tuning in to weekly discussions, commenting with our thoughts, sharing our favorite passages, and connecting over great books. If you are looking for your next great read but can’t wait until the next Book Club selection is announced, we’ve got you covered with these five titles tailored to each of Oprah’s 2023 picks.

This year, our selections included a 714-page odyssey through Southern India, two very different modern love stories, a nonfiction exploration of the hidden power of hard emotions, and a lyrical journey into the depths of the American slave system. While these books varied tremendously, each transported us to new worlds and allowed us to see the one we live in differently. The recommendations on this list will do the same. Whatever mood you’re looking for, we’ve got a new read for the holidays that will match it. Ahead, five books to curl up with by the fire…after you’ve finished the 2023 selections but before the first choice for 2024 is announced.

If you loved The Covenant of Water, you should read Cutting for Stone

Readers who were fascinated by the medical, political, and family history of The Covenant of Water, the 101st Oprah’s Book Club pick, will devour author Abraham Verghese’s first novel, Cutting for Stone, the story of twin boys born in Ethiopia to an Indian nun and a British doctor. As with The Covenant of Water, which is set in Kerala, Verghese—who was born in Ethiopia to Indian parents—drew from his personal life to create this book’s evocative world. “It’s a very rich cultural heritage that I carry,” he says, “a dual heritage, and I wanted to set the novel there.”

If you loved Bittersweet, you should read Book of Longing

In Bittersweet, the 99th Oprah’s Book Club pick, author Susan Cain argues that we should embrace, rather than avoid, feelings of sorrow and longing. Her conclusions were inspired by Leonard Cohen’s strangely uplifting songs. Though known as a musician, Cohen is also an author. His most bittersweet book, Book of Longing, features poems that were mostly written during a stay at a Zen monastery and echo Cain’s message that difficult emotions have healing power. “Sorrow is the time to begin,” he writes. “Longing is the place to rejoice.”

If you loved Hello Beautiful, you should read Little Women

Like Oprah’s 100th Book Club selection, Louisa May Alcott’s classic tells the story of four strong sisters and a young, lonely man eager to find his place in their tightly bound family. But, as Ann Napolitano revealed to us earlier this year, she didn’t notice the similarities between the Padavano sisters and the March sisters until her characters noticed it themselves. “I was well into the first draft, and the Padavano sisters started to compare themselves to the sisters from Little Women,” she explained. “I’m often surprised when I write; my work is usually wiser than I am.”

If you loved Let Us Descend, you should read The Water Dancer

Both Oprah’s 103rd pick, Let Us Descend, and her 81st pick, The Water Dancer, are quest stories in which a young, enslaved protagonist is guided through the antebellum South by memories of his mother, ancestral knowledge, and spirituality. But where Jesmyn Ward takes readers on a descent into the depths of slavery, Ta-Nehisi Coates takes them on an ascent to freedom, as his narrator escapes and journeys north. Read together, these two lyrical novels capture a wide, unique, and deeply human view of American enslavement.

If you loved Wellness, you should read A Visit from the Goon Squad

One of the (many) triumphs of Wellness, the 102nd Oprah’s Book Club selection, is the way Nathan Hill tracks how his characters change over time, becoming strangers to themselves and each other. How did two people so dizzyingly in love become so cold and distant? Told in quick-witted, interlocking vignettes, Jennifer Egan’s Goon Squad asks similar questions: how our worlds and ourselves become comically and devastatingly unrecognizable through innovation, shifting culture, seemingly insignificant interactions, hard choices, and bursts of luck.

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