Step aside, Oprah. Jimmy Fallon has launched his own book club. The late-night host has launched The Tonight Show Summer Reads , and he has announced his very first book club pick. Fallon made the announcement on Friday night’s episode of The Tonight Show , revealing that his first-ever book club pick will be Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Blood and Bone. Fallon revealed that the YA fantasy novel, the first of a trilogy, won the honors after receiving over 140,000 votes from audience members.
“This is the jam right here,” Fallon said of the book, which has garnered comparisons to Harry Potter and Game of Thrones and. Adeyemi told the Hollywood Reporter the book can be described as “ Black Panther with magic.”
Fallon told his audience they don’t need money or friends to join in the Tonight Show book club. The late-night host suggested picking the book up at the library for free.
“You don’t even need friends. I’m reading the book with you. You don’t need money or your friends.”
Fallon, who teased that it may take him “three or four weeks” to get through the lengthy novel, first announced plans for his book club last week.
Tonight Show viewers were asked to vote for the book club’s first novel from Fallon’s curated list. Children of Blood and Bone beat out The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin, The Good Son by You-Jeong Jeong , IQ by Joe Ide, and Providence by Caroline Kepnes.
“Summer’s officially here and I don’t have a book to read,” Fallon told his audience. “I don’t have a summer read. So I figured it’d be kind of fun to do a summer book club. We should really do a thing and we’re calling it the Tonight Show Summer Reads!”
Jimmy Fallon will have some big shoes to fill with his TV book club. When Oprah Winfrey launched Oprah’s Book Club back in 1996, the lucky authors featured on her program often went on to bestseller status. Oprah’s first book club pick, The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacqueline Mitchard, landed a big screen movie adaption. In 2006, James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces , a memoir about drug addiction, made headlines as one of the most controversial picks in the club. After Oprah found out some parts of the book were fictional, she invited Frey to her show for a book club bashing.
You can see Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show book club announcement below.
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon airs weeknights at 11:35 p.m. on NBC.
