What you need to know
Katie Couric’s New Year’s resolution for 2026 is simple. “Scroll less, read more.”
Her goal is to read one book every month this year, and she’s holding herself accountable by reading one book at a time with her 2.1 million Instagram followers. Introducing the latest celebrity book club, KCBC.
“I love reading,” Couric tells PEOPLE in an exclusive interview. “And I realized that keeping up with current events, scrolling through social media, and frequently doomscrolling took up too much headspace and I didn’t have enough time to read great books.”
Ms. Couric has read some true page-turners in 2025, including “Signal Fires” by her friend Dani Shapiro and “All the Beauty in the World” by Patrick Bringley, but she hasn’t read as many as she had hoped. When she posted her followers’ thoughts on starting a book club on Instagram, the response was overwhelming.
The post received more than 56,000 likes and nearly 10,000 comments, including one that read: “OMG. I love this idea!! Invite me. Invite me!! Xoxo.” and “Yes, a book club with Katie would be so much fun! I’d join too!”
Couric hopes that KCBC (which stands for Katie Couric’s Book Club, but reminds Couric of the rock band AC/DC) will not only help her achieve her New Year’s resolutions, but also help her followers do the same. “I think a lot of people feel like they’re spending too much time on their phones,” Couric said. “This is not just an issue for teenagers, it’s an issue for adults as well.”
She also hopes to use her following and influence to convince each author to participate in live interviews. Fortunately for KCBC members, Virginia Evans, author of this year’s smash hit The Correspondent, has already been confirmed to join Couric on Monday, January 19th.
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“I slid into her DMs, as they say,” Couric says. “I sent her a formal invitation, as if I were writing a letter, because The Correspondent is what you would call an epistolary novel, a series of letters.” Couric is happy to share that Evans was looking forward to hearing from her.
KCBC members can join Couric and Evans next week on Couric’s Substack. This is the platform she decided to make her book club home.
Couric plans to use crowdsourcing to choose each month’s books. “I’m just going to pick one, and I hope people like it and get excited about it,” she says. And while she plans to primarily feature fiction and is looking forward to some “escapist reading,” she is confident the club will “have some non-fiction options as well.”
“Honestly, I think I’m really excited to read more fiction because I’ve been reading a lot about what’s going on in the world,” Couric tells PEOPLE.
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After “The Correspondent,” Couric’s second book in 2026 was “Strangers: A Marriage Memoir” by Belle Baden. She hasn’t chosen her third book yet, but is looking forward to sharing her next pick with KCBC members and getting the chance to chat with authors and readers.
“There’s something special about talking to authors who put their heart and soul into their books,” Couric says. “I think they deserve our gratitude and appreciation, and I love going behind the scenes and understanding how someone put something together. How they were inspired, their process, and what they learned from writing.”
Readers can join KCBC with Couric’s Substack.
