From Patti Smith to Douglas Stuart: Dua Lipa’s favourite books
While being a pop star, Glastonbury headliner, and one of the most famous women on the planet, Dua Lipa somehow still makes time to be an avid reader. As she runs a book club for her fans, her recommendations span genres and styles, proving to be just as multi-faceted as the singer herself.
Being a globally famous artist might be expected to keep Dua Lipa pretty busy, but she still has time to come for our jobs. Alongside her music career, she also founded Service95, an online culture platform that shares newsletters, podcasts and stories across politics, music, mental health and beyond. While using the site to platform the voices of other creatives, whether that be writers, artists or activists, it’s also a way for fans to get to know the singer better as each recommendation feels like a look behind the glossy exterior and into her personal life.
It could be said that there’s nothing quite as personal as a recommendation. The pieces of culture a person engages with feel like an insight into the deepest corners of them as it’s not just a matter of the brain but of the heart, the spirit and personality. Reading especially is a personal thing. It’s a quiet, intimate act that offers a moment of alone time. There’s no persona or public face needed when it comes to reading, so our bookshelves can often reveal our truest selves.
Or at least that’s probably what Dua Lipa’s fans like to think when it comes to the Service95 book club, as if each month she’s reading alongside them and offering a personal recommendation straight from her own heart. Since June of 2023, she’s recommended memoirs, works of fiction, classics and beyond.
Naturally, some engage with music. Like thousands of others, Dua Lipa is a fan of Patti Smith’s deeply moving memoir, Just Kids, recounting her years spent with her creative soulmate, Robert Maplethorpe. But while this is a biography, the book has taken on a life of its own as Smith’s poetry fills the pages. “It’s hard to define Patti – she is a singer, a songwriter, a poet, a painter and, of course, an author,” Lipa told her fans in her introduction to the text, “It’s safe to say that we get something of all of these personas through this beautiful book.” As the story takes the reader to the heart of Smith’s position amidst the New York scene in the 1970s, it’s a moment Lipa wishes she could have been a part of as she said, “I’d have loved to be part of such a cool era. Patti gives us the next best thing – possibly the most spellbinding account of New York in the ’70s ever written.”
From New York to further afield, her recommendations also take readers to Korea, Nigeria and beyond. Half Of A Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie stands out as another favourite as Lipa wrote, “The story takes place in 1960s Nigeria, both before and during the Nigerian Civil War, also known as the Biafran War.” But to her, part of reading is all about learning and discovering. She said, “If this is a period of history you are not familiar with, don’t worry; you are not alone. Chimamanda skilfully balances truth and fiction, giving a gripping sense of what was at stake for those who lived through the war and granting this travesty the attention it deserves.”
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee is another recommendation that taught her a history lesson, this time set in Korea. “Along the way, I learned so much about the annexation of Korea and early 20th-century Japanese colonialism,” she said, but added, “If that makes it sound like a heavy lift – don’t worry, it’s not. I was totally absorbed by the characters and, in fact, it’s so readable it will leave you wanting more.”
Moving slightly closer to her London home, she recommended Shuggie Bain, the debut novel from Scottish-American writer Douglas Stuart. “I clearly have a thing for heart-breaking books, and this is no exception,” she said, with an insight into her love for emotive works. The novel dives into the relationship between Shuggie Bain and his alcoholic mother in a devastating consideration of love, family and struggle. But amidst the dark, Lipa found light as she said, “There is so much love within the pages of this book, particularly between Shuggie and his mother Agnes.”
From the contemporary to the classic, Lipa recommended One Hundred Years of Solitude, a 1967 novel by Columbian writer Gabriel García Márquez. “This incredible novel put me under a spell,” she said. Throughout the book, fantasy and reality are weaved together in a dreamlike prose that some love and some hate. Lipa was a fan, “I was captivated by the fantastical elements that live alongside reality and loved how time loops and sways in the fictional town of Macondo,” she said.
Her most recent recommendation comes in the form of Malorie Blackman’s Noughts and Crosses, so pick up a copy to join her literary masses of fans.
