Dua Lipa Reveals October Service95 Book Club Monthly Read

Dua Lipa’s Service95 Book Club reveals details about October’s Monthly Read: Lincoln In The Bardo by George Saunders. The Service95 Book Club will offer exclusive content from Dua and George throughout the month on service95.com and across socials.

“I loved this unique, bold and compassionate book,” Dua shares. “At its heart, this is a story of one of the most famous men in history – President Abraham Lincoln – grieving for his dead son Willie, whose death foreshadows the hundreds of thousands of lives that are about to be lost in the American Civil War.”

Dua adds, “The action takes place over just 24 hours and is narrated by a cacophony of monologuing, bickering ghosts in a graveyard. Yes, you read that right, and yes, it does take a while to settle into this unusual style. But stick with it and your mind will be well and truly blown – there is no one writing today who can match George Saunders for compassion and empathy. The very last page still replays in my mind. The voices of these spirits – the wretched and the brave, and the dead boy Willie Lincoln – will stay with me forever.”

This month’s content includes an interview between Dua and George, where the two discuss the seed of the idea for the book and the parallel stories of both personal grief and a nation’s grief during the American Civil War. Dua and George also connect over their creative processes and perform a reading of the book together.

To accompany the interview, George penned an exclusive essay giving an inside look into his writing process of Lincoln In The Bardo, as well as his recommended reading list and writing soundtrack. Readers can also check out a thought-provoking context piece, which provides further insight, research, and history about Abraham Lincoln and his involvement in The Civil War. Finally, the book club has offered a list of 10 essential questions to help readers delve into their own interpretations of the novel, and later this month, the book club will release an exclusive video from George sharing tips on how to read Lincoln In The Bardo for those who might be intimidated to start it.

Dua’s Service95 Book Club is the latest offering from her Service95 platform, which consists of the At Your Service podcast and the flagship Service95 newsletter. Service95 has been praised by The Guardian as "some of the most thought-provoking short-form cultural writing you can find,” and the podcast has been lauded by The Sunday Times, Vogue and Vulture. In addition, Spotify named it one of the Best Podcasts of 2022, and praised Dua as “an incredibly thoughtful interviewer with a genuine interest in people, social movements, and the arts.”

You can follow Service95 on socials and YouTube to get the latest, and subscribe to the newsletter here to stay in the loop on upcoming monthly reads.

About George Saunders

Is George Saunders the kindest writer we know? Probably. He is also Professor George Saunders at Syracuse University where he’s guided generations in creative writing since 1996. A master of the short story, George’s collection The Tenth Of December was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the Folio Prize in 2013, the same year he was included in TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People. Of George’s 11 books, Lincoln In The Bardo is his first and only novel (so far). It was a No. 1 New York Times bestseller and winner of the 2017 Man Booker Prize. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, an exploration of the art of the Russian short story (think of it as sitting in one of his seminars) was a bestseller, and his latest story collection, Liberation Day, was chosen as one of President Obama’s favourite books of 2022.

About Dua Lipa

3x GRAMMY and 7x BRIT Award-winning global pop powerhouse Dua Lipa continues to be one of pop music’s leading forces with the release of her third album, Radical Optimism. Upon release, the album went straight to No. 1 in 11 countries, including the UK where it became the biggest album debut from a UK artist in 2024 and garnered the highest week one sales from a UK female artist since 2021. In the US, the album debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart and No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart, marking Dua’s biggest sales week yet. The New York Times named it a Critic’s Pick and hailed it as “an album of nonstop ear candy,” along with Variety, who declared it “a joyous blast of pop savvy,” The New Yorker, who praised, “the instrumentation is a gleaming and impenetrable expanse, and the main attraction is Lipa,” and Vogue, who raved it is “a summery, self-assured slice of pop brilliance…[and] catchy as hell.”

Following its release in 2020, Dua's certified platinum sophomore album Future Nostalgia became the longest running top 10 album by a female artist on the Billboard 200 in 2021. The GRAMMY Award-winning album spawned multiple worldwide hit singles, with “Levitating” earning certified diamond status and the title of Billboard’s No. 1 Hot 100 Song of 2021. 

Dua has found superstar status on stage and off, thanks to her many passions outside of music. 2022 saw Dua launch Service95, a global style, culture and society editorial platform that now comprises a weekly newsletter, the Service95 book club and the Dua Lipa: At Your Service podcast, which has been lauded by The Sunday Timesand The Guardian, and was named one of the Best Podcasts of 2022 by Spotify. Having graced every major fashion magazine worldwide from Vogue and Elle to W and Dazed, Dua added "designer" to her resume in 2023 when she co-designed Versace's "La Vacanza" collection alongside Donatella Versace herself, which Vogue deemed "the hottest collaboration of the summer."

Dua’s eponymous 2017 debut album is certified platinum, spawned six platinum tracks, and made her the first female artist in BRIT Awards history to pick up five nominations in a single year. Dua has a total of 10 GRAMMY nominations, with three wins for Best Pop Vocal Album, Best New Artist and Best Dance Recording. Additionally, she earned nominations at the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards for her hit song “Dance The Night” from the box office sensation Barbie. Across platforms globally, she has amassed over 45 billion streams and holds the record for being the first female artist to have two albums with over 10 billion streams each on Spotify.