Actress, blogger and book aficianado Gwyneth Paltrow. (Dave Hogan/Getty Images)

Ah, Gwyneth Paltrow, she of the praying mantis-thin, Calvin Klein shift dress-wearing body, famous parentage, sensitive rock star husband and fruit-monikered offspring. Try as I might, I just can't hate her.

For starters, Gwyneth can actually be a pretty decent actress when she sets her mind to it. Also, her personal website, GOOP, is fast becoming one of my favourite obsessions.

GOOP's tone is captivating. Boasting personal recipes from Gwyneth’s kitchen, newsletters, inspirational notes on topics like “sticktoitivness” and even the odd exercise video from her personal yoga trainer, Paltrow’s site is deadly earnest. There’s something fascinating about all of the personal touches she’s included to assure her fans she’s really just a mensch like the rest of us (which, of course, couldn’t be further from the truth). Nevertheless, I feel like her heart is in the right place, and my visits to the site have become increasingly frequent.

So when blog posts started cropping up about Gwynnie’s Hollywood book club, I knew I had to check in and see what was up. Sure enough, Paltrow has posted a list of her favourite January reads on GOOP, along with top book picks from some of her more literary-minded famous friends, including Madonna (no surprise, Madge’s favourite is a novel called The Bad Girl). Though Gwyneth doesn’t mention any specifics about impending book club get-togethers on GOOP, online articles insist she formed the group to help take Madonna’s mind off her recent split from Guy Ritchie.

Whatever the reason, I can’t complain about any site that’s encouraging readers to discover the joys of Leo Tolstoy, Jane Eyre and Dostoevsky. And the gossipy part of me loves knowing that it was fellow actor Ethan Hawke who first introduced Gwyneth to Paul Bowles’s The Sheltering Sky, a gesture she now calls “a sort of literary bringing down to size.”

--Lee Ferguson