Oprah’s 117th Pick Is . . . Another White Male Author

It’s hot white guy summer for Oprah this year, as she’s just announced her latest book club pick. The 117th pick is Richard Russo’s Bridge of Sighs. The book follows a 60-year-old man named Louis–Lucy–who has spent his entire life living in the same New York town as he and his wife prepare to travel to Italy on vacation. Lucy’s life has always been safe and he’s hoping that on his trip, he can reconnect with his oldest friend. Lucy hopes that reconnection can help him tell the story of the small town where Lucy lives and that his friend abandoned so many years ago.

Oprah describes the book as “a powerful story about unrequited love, life-long friendships, epic family drama, and the grip of the past. One man’s small-town life takes a turn when a trip to Venice reopens old wounds and forgotten dreams. It makes you wonder: Can you truly overcome your destiny?”

Bridge of Sighs is not only not a new book–it published in 2007–but it is the third book in a row selected by the Oprah Book Club written by a white male author. In June, she selected Wally Lamb’s The River is Waiting, the third title selected by the author for the Book Club. Her July pick was Bruce Holsinger’s Culpability.

Seeing three white male authors selected back-to-back-to-back during a summer where media headlines have done plenty of handwringing over the male reading and authorship crisis. The New York Times asked “Where Have All The Novel-Reading Men Gone,” while the Atlantic revealed “The Real Reason Men Should Read Fiction.” A new publisher called Conduit Books announced this summer that their goal to focus on male writers while Vox fact-checks the statistic that has helped lead to so much of the male-reading panic. Vox also points out that the Substack platform has become the cool place for both literary male readers and literary male-authored novels.

And even before this summer, the paper of record was emphasizing back in December that we should all be worried about the disappearance of the literary man.

Since the beginning of 2025, Oprah’s Book Club has selected two books authored by women. Neither of them are novels. The first, Amy Griffin’s The Tell, is about Griffin’s experience utilizing psychedelic-assisted therapy to work through childhood trauma she couldn’t escape. The second, Matriarch by Tina Knowles, is the story of Beyonce and Solange’s mother, as told in her own voice. Ocean Vuong’s The Emperor of Gladness offers readers a work of literary fiction from the voice of an author who identifies in the margins of gender.

Oprah re-picked a male-authored book, Eckert Tolle’s A New Earth to kick off 2025, followed by February’s Dream State by Eric Puchner.

It’s striking to see such gender disparity play out when it comes to the works that earn Oprah’s seal of approval in the year 2025, especially compared to fellow celebrity book lover Reese’s Book Club, which has always highlighted and championed books by women. We’ll never know if Oprah’s intentionally worked to highlight male literary fiction as a result of seeing headlines decrying the loss of the literary man or not. But one thing is for certain: there’s no shortage of books that center men’s stories, and seeing a legacy celebrity book club lean all the way in is disappointing.

Perhaps it’s also fair to say that it’s not entirely surprising, either.