Emma Roberts announces first pick for new book club

Earlier this week, Emma Roberts launched a book club by the name of Belletrist, and she just announced that Joan Didion’s South and West: From a Notebook is the club’s official first reading.

“Good morning #belletristbabes,” she wrote on Instagram Thursday. “I’m over the moon to announce #SouthandWest by #JoanDidion as the first #belletristbook!”

South and West — which went on sale earlier this month — is the widely revered writer’s newest nonfiction book, and comes from a compilation of notes she took during a 1970 road trip with her late husband, John Gregory Dunne, as well as her musings during the infamous Patty Hearst trial in 1976, for which she was originally supposed to pen a Rolling Stone piece.

During an interview for Belletrist, Roberts asked Didion about the inception of this book: “What came first: the idea of publishing something about the South and the West, or did you go through your notebooks and think to yourself, ‘I might have something here?'”

“I went through my notebooks and thought I might have something here,” said Didion. “I’ve yet to discover whether I did or not. I know when most pieces are finished, but with these I never knew. At the moment, I don’t seem to be any closer to knowing.”

The full interview can be found here. Roberts also penned a recent essay on the book, which can be found here.