In recent years, celebrity book clubs are getting more and more trendy across pop culture. Stars frequently leverage literary endorsements as tools for personal branding or lifestyle marketing. Critics have noted that those books are often chosen by stylists and don’t actually reflect genuine literary engagement. However, Dua Lipa’s literary platform stands out.

What is Service95?

It is a global editorial and culture platform that serves as a curated “cultural concierge” for readers. Dua Lipa launched it in 2021 and it’s still an incredibly influential source. The platform includes a weekly lifestyle newsletter, a dedicated website, and podcast Dua Lipa: At Your Service. In June 2023, Lipa expanded Service95 and launched her Book Club. Service95 Book Club combines book recommendations with an author conversation and relevant articles.

“What a joy it is to read. What a joy to read the world.”

— Dua Lipa, in her speech at the International Booker Prize

Each month, Dua picks a title and publishes new material around it, including a video conversation with the author and exclusive essays. The mission of the Book Club is to highlight diverse global voices across fiction, memoirs, manifestos, and translated literature. Here are essential picks from Service 95 Book Club (subscribe to their newsletter to stay informed!).

1. Trust by Hernan Diaz

This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel was selected as the March 2024 pick. Set in 1920s and 1930s New York, Trust explores wealth, power, and perception through four distinct internal narratives: there’s a novel, an unfinished manuscript, a memoir, and a private diary. Dua said the book made her head spin, as readers are forced to question which version of reality to believe. This pick produced one of Lipa’s most celebrated author interviews with Hernan Diaz . (Fun fact: Lipa’s husband Callum Turner revealed that the novel played a key part in the start of their relationship).

2. Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

This pick suited the club’s music-adjacent identity, since Zauner also leads the indie band Japanese Breakfast. Crying in H Mart is a memoir that chronicles the author’s complex relationship with her mother, her Korean heritage and connection to food, and the grief following her mother’s terminal cancer diagnosis.

Lipa told her book club members she cried her way through the book, praising how it balances heartbreak with warmth. You can read the summary of Crying in H Mart right here:

3. Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe

Non-fiction is a rarer choice for celebrity clubs, and Dua framed this pick confidently. Say Nothing investigates the violent period known as “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland, using the 1972 abduction of Jean McConville, a mother of ten, to unpack political violence and historical trauma. Dua called it a masterclass in the “non-fiction novel.” The book had won the Orwell Prize for Political Writing and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction.

Author Patrick Radden Keefe also contributed an essay on the art of investigative journalism, plus a reading list and playlist. If you’re intrigued, pair your reading with these sources.

4. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

This was the club’s biggest name so far; selected as the November 2025 Book Club pick. Dua described it as a title that terrified her in high school. The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopian novel about a totalitarian regime that forces women into reproductive servitude. Dua paired it with Atwood’s memoir Book of Lives and conducted a discussion with the author that turned out to be layered and funny. In the interview, Atwood recalled visiting East Bloc countries in the 80s, whose surveillance state inspired totalitarian Gilead.

5. Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

September 2026 book club pick was described by Dua as “profound, sincere, regularly comedic and quite unlike anything I’ve ever read before.” The story is about Cyrus Shams, a newly sober poet reckoning with the loss of his mother, who died on Iran Air Flight 655. The book was a National Book Award finalist and one of the New York Times’ Ten Best Books of the Year. To accompany the pick, Service95 published an explainer on Iran Air Flight 655.

6. Just Kids by Patti Smith

Patti Smith’s National Book Award-winning memoir details her relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and their shared artistic awakening in 1970s New York City. Dua writes that this book is “possibly the most spellbinding account of New York in the ’70s ever written.” To experience it better, put on the tunes selected by Patti Smith’s in this article. All the key events and ideas of Just Kids are thoroughly summarized here:

7. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is written as a letter from a young Vietnamese-American son to his illiterate mother. Lipa shared that she was captivated by the title alone and noted that Vuong’s poetic syntax “dances on every page,” skilfully depicting mother-son devotion. Dua hosted a Service95 author conversation with Ocean Vuong to discuss storytelling and memory.

8. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

The club was only in its second month when Dua chose Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko. The novel follows a Korean family across four generations, and Dua was drawn to its themes of cultural identity and women’s struggle in a man’s world. She said she learned a great deal about Korea’s annexation and Japanese colonialism along the way.

If you’ve read it or are planning to and are looking for similar titles, check out our article about 10 books like Pachinko.

Pop culture and intellectualism?

Read together, these eight books show what the club is for. Nearly every one comes with an author conversation and a stack of context that makes the book easier to grasp. By pairing global literary curation with rigorous author interviews, Dua Lipa’s book club helps find connection between mainstream pop stardom and contemporary literature.