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Reese Witherspoon kindly paid tribute to her high school English teacher with her 100th book selection for Reese’s Book Club.
The 48-year-old producer – who launched her book club in 2017 – celebrated her former teacher, a woman who inspired her love for literature, by picking her original book as her next suggested read.
On September 3, the Legally Blonde lead took to her Instagram, officially announcing Margaret Renkl’s The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year as the 100th book club pick. Next to a heartwarming picture of Witherspoon embracing her high school teacher, she wrote: “Our 100th @reesesbookclub pick, #TheComfortOfCrows by @margaret.renkl is a beautiful love letter to nature and the world around us.
“Divided into fifty-two chapters, it follows the creatures and plants in Margaret’s backyard over the course of a year, capturing both the joy of nature’s ongoing pleasures and the grief of fleeting moments,” Witherspoon explained before detailing the sentimental reasoning behind her choice.
“As my high school English teacher (!!), Margaret had a profound impact on my life, making it incredibly special to have her as our 100th author,” she continued. “Thank you all for reading with me, 100 books later.”
In a promotional YouTube video, the Big Little Lies star sat down with Renkl to discuss her book and quip about what Witherspoon was like as a young academic.
Witherspoon candidly admitted her love for reading developed with a desire to escape reality. She said books were “a private place to go” for her, especially when her acting career progressed during her teenage years.
“You were working in an adult world but you were still a kid,” Renkl noted. “And you were still navigating ... the cliques and the casual cruelty of high school.”
“You already knew that language, that stories were the way to make something make sense that is hard to make sense of,” she added of Witherspoon.
One year after Witherspoon founded her media company, Hello Sunshine, alongside Seth Rodsky, the Hollywood star created Reese’s Book Club, promoting primarily female authors and women-led narratives. Each month, Reese’s Book Club selects one book, nonfiction or fiction, as its must-read.
Similar to the merit of a New York Times bestseller title, fans and avid readers have come to respect Reese’s Book Club’s selections. The organization has notoriously promoted a wide variety of stories, from enchanted fantasies to nailbiting thrillers and self-help. For July, both The Cliffs by J Courtney Sullivan and Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell were selected.
