The American Library Association has for nearly 40 years been putting out “Read” posters featuring celebrities and books. Lots of us remember these from school and libraries—my elementary school had the Shaq one guarding the reference books section. When I set out to compile a list of these posters, my initial thought was to gather all of them, but I quickly found that to be impossible: There are so many of them.
Just, so many. And until some enterprising library sciences student puts together the definitive archive, we’re stuck scouring the ALA website and eBay poster reseller pages. Out of what I was able to uncover and find a high-ish quality images of online, I picked my 100 favorites that I’ll be ranking based on these criteria: — Would I be happy to see this in my library? Is it interesting to look at? Does it tell a story? — Is the book the celeb is toting good? Is it a good recommendation for a library? — This might seem like a strange metric, but just wait: a lot of these celebrities are posing with books in baffling ways.
— Ultimately, these posters have one job to do. Was this photo taken under duress? Or right before an elevator door closed? How did they manage to make Channing Tatum uncharismatic? Holding up like it’s the ID placard in a mug shot? A backdrop of stars and bubbles? Does anyone else smell toast? Sinister! You know he has the absolute worst take on too. This poster’s not bad, but mostly it’s not anything.
Cena looks like a CEO.
