LeVar Burton — of Roots, Star Trek, Reading Rainbow (and now Jeopardy) fame — is continuing to inspire a love of reading, now with his new book club.
The LeVar Burton Book Club launched on the reading app Fable on Tuesday, May 12th. For the first three books, Burton chose titles that have shaped his own identity: James Baldwin's Go Tell It On the Mountain, Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, and Jesmyn Ward's The Fire This Time.
RELATED: These Are All the Octavia Butler Adaptations Currently in Development
Go Tell It on the Mountain will be the focus of the book club's first month, and three new book selections will be revealed every three months.
Burton told Entertainment Weekly that he selected this Baldwin book because "if you're going to be introduced to Baldwin, or engage with Baldwin, it makes sense to begin with his origin story because it informs everything that he brought to the world of the written word."
The TV host and actor says Jesmyn Ward's The Fire Next Time was a natural selection in conversation with Baldwin's work: "the essays and the pieces that Jesmyn has compiled are equally informative, illustrative, and enlightening of the Black experience in America."
Burton, whose own sci-fi novel Aftermath envisioned a dystopian America, also stated that Octavia Butler's writing has been deeply impactful on his own identity:
"Octavia Butler is a foundational figure in my love for science fiction, simply because when I was growing up and reading science fiction, there weren't any heroes in those novels who looked like me. Octavia Butler created worlds of Black people in the future, and that is a distinction that I think isn't lost on a lot of people. She represents an opening up and a new era in speculative literature. But, again, on a personal level, her inspiration to me has been foundational in my continuing appreciation for the genre."
Download the LeVar Burton Book Club selections today!
