Catherine Nixey

speaker

366 appearances 5 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 16 Jul

Catherine Nixey’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 5 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 2.

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Which are tricky to explain, but rarely, it is safe to say, trouble the pages of Dostoyevsky.

Celebrity book clubs have been popular for over a century, and with good reason, they solve so many literary problems.

Publishers love them because they help flog books.

George Orwell's 1984 shot up the bestseller lists when it was picked by the American Book of the Month Club.

Books picked by Oprah Winfrey experience the Oprah effect and are grabbed from their shelves.

Those picked by Witherspoon similarly experience the Reese effect.

And readers love book clubs because they help them to know which books are actually any good.

Last year, over four million books were published in America alone.

And it's an open secret in publishing that most of them are either bad or dull, or more likely, both.

Modern critics question celebrities' motivation.

Their qualifications and their dedication to the literary cause.

Winfrey's podcast, for example, intersperses programs on books with programs with titles like Do Dogs Really Love Us?

and Building a Billion-Dollar Brand?

These celebrities, critics say, are not interested in books.

They are just building that brand.

They are less reading books than accessorising with them on Instagram.

In one shot, Leaper licks her teeth while holding a copy of Margaret Atwood's biography.

A typical quote reads,

Male fantasies, male fantasies.

Івритін би мale фантасії.

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