What To Know About ‘Love Island USA’ Star Jeremiah Brown’s Book Club

Jeremiah Brown left the “Love Island USA” villa with hundreds of thousands of new Instagram followers.

Following his exit in Episode 18, Jeremiah went on the standard circuit of interviews and podcast appearances. Like many Islanders, he continued to engage with his rapid rise in social media fans.

“I was on TikTok Live, just talking to the community, and then someone was like, ‘You should do a book club,'” Jeremiah tells TODAY.com.

In his official introductory video to “Love Island USA,” Jeremiah described himself as a “huge bookworm,” a descriptor that stuck with fans.

“It was a lightbulb moment, that I stole. I tried to find the name, I swear,” he continues with a laugh.

Jeremiah tells TODAY.com his love of reading starting in middle school, at his uncle’s comic book shop. He went on to dabble in manga and found a love for graphic novels, like the “Scott Pilgrim” series. In college, though, he fell out of the habit.

“I wouldn’t let myself be happy a lot of my high school career, I would just be locked in my room playing video games angry. So then, boom, during COVID, I was like, ‘Oh now I’m really stuck in the room. Let me get rid of this anger,'” he says. “So I turned to stoicism.”

And now, he’s turning to literary fiction and romance. Jeremiah’s book club will hold its first meeting on Aug. 4, where he and his followers will discuss the first 12 chapters of “The Song of Achilles.”

Here’s how the latest celebrity book club came to be.

Stepping Outside of His Reading ‘Comfort Zone’

After consulting with his sister and his team, he decided to go full steam ahead with Jeremiah’s Reading Room. The club’s Instagram page now has 116,000 members.

Instead of picking nonfiction books on his TBR pile, he let his followers vote on what he’d read next, keeping with the spirit of “Love Island USA.”

“It’s definitely out of my comfort zone,” he says, “which I love.”

During a live in June, Jeremiah asked viewers to first vote for a book genre. Romance won.

He then shared a list of 11 potential romance books in a poll. The winner was Madeline Miller’s 2011 debut novel, which tells the Greek legend of the Trojan War from the perspective of Patroclus, Achilles’ close friend and, in Miller’s text, lover.

Once they picked the book, they voted on first meeting date, time and reading pace. The result is a monthly meeting, to be held on TikTok Live or Discord, which houses servers for voice, video and text communication. The Discord platform, which has more than 30,000 members, allows his followers to talk with each other “all the time.”

“I’ll do random pop up lives, and subscribers get an extra live a month,” he says. “Then I’ll put some questions in the Instagram channel like once or twice a week.”

Jeremiah, who was on Chapter 4 of “Song of Achilles” before the interview, says he hadn’t read a romantic novel since high school.

“The personification, the way she describes things that aren’t human as they are human. I was like, ‘It can’t be your first book.’ I’ve never read anything like this ever.”

“I didn’t expect him — I don’t want to spoil it — but I didn’t expect the third chapter when he got booted,” he adds, referring to Patroclus’ exile to Phthia.

He says his goal with the book club is to eventually host in-person events across the country, “like a book club carnival,” to connect readers and authors. He’s already met some members of Jeremiah’s Reading Room.

“My favorite part is when people come in like, ‘Can we get a picture? I’m in your book club,'” he says. “It’s just crazy.”

Jeremiah’s Book Recommendations

Jeremiah’s recommendations primarily come from his pre-villa reading, focused on the nonfiction and self-improvement genre.

• “When Things Fall Apart” by Pema Chödrön
• “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F—“ by Mark Manson
• “Ego Is the Enemy” by Ryan Holiday
• “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success” by Carol Dweck
• “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey
• “Can’t Hurt Me” by David Goggins

Jeremiah says through the book club, he’s learning “it’s OK to read for fun.”

“I always used to read to better myself,” he says.

“I’m just allowing myself to be like, ‘OK, just enjoy the book,'” he adds. “It doesn’t have to be learning about your ego or learning about why you care about this. So I’m just trying to enjoy myself — actually just reading something just for fun that’s not based around necessarily getting better. Even though it probably might make me better.”