“I’m very nervous about doing this,” says Coel with admirable candor. “My memory is really bad, to the point that I forgot how bad my memory was.” She does, however, recall being spurred to spend a summer reading books by her local library which gave a medal to anyone who reached a goal of reading ten books. Coel, the child of an immigrant Ghanaian mother, won that library medal after devouring Marieke Nijkamp’s series of graphic novels for kids, Goosebumps. “I wasn’t really into things like sports, I didn’t dance, so reading really occupied me that summer and took my brain somewhere else, for which I’m forever grateful.” The actress, screenwriter, and director, who found acclaim in the UK with her series, Chewing Gum, and then as the lead in Black Earth Rising, Hugo Blick’s intense political thriller for Netflix, is a keen writer herself: she went through 191 drafts of her autobiographical HBO-BBC series, I May Destroy You, before she felt ready to release it into the world. The series won her a British Academy Award, and she is nominated for four Emmys this year, including for actress, writer, and director. If that was not enough, she has just published her first book, Misfits, based on a wry, moving, often witty lecture she was invited to give at the Edinburgh International Television Festival in 2018 (you can watch it online here) in which she talked about the racism she’d encountered in drama school and the wider entertainment industry. Her book expands on and deepens the themes of that lecture.  Below, are Michaela Coel's favorite books, available to purchase individually or as a set.

Michaela Coel'S FAVORITE BOOKS

When HBO, desperate to feed the pandemic TV appetite, asked Mike White if he wanted to create a new TV show, the veteran actor, writer, and director didn’t need to be asked twice. “The filtration system of getting something on the air is aggravating and time-consuming,” he told The New Yorker recently. “I thought, If they go with this, it’ll be like a boulder they can’t stop. I can do exactly what I want to do.” The “this” was his runaway hit, The White Lotus, a veritable Trojan Horse--a spiky critique of class and privilege dressed up as a murder mystery. A second season was greenlit before the first season--six episodes each written and directed by White--concluded with what was among the most satisfying TV finales in recent memory. White has one of Hollywood’s most eclectic resumes, running the gamut from the comedy musical, School of Rock, to the lauded HBO series, Enlightened, starring Laura Dern, to, well, The Emoji Movie, but his not-so-secret passion is competing on reality TV. He has been a contestant on The Amazing Race, twice, and on Survivor. “As a writer of drama, I aspire to do what reality television already does,” he told The New Yorker, “To create characters that are surprising and dimensional and do weird shit and capture your attention.” When he’s not writing, directing, acting, or competing, White is a reader, as this list of books reflects. “These may not be my 10 favorite books, that’s impossible,” he writes. “But these come to mind and are ones I’m always recommending.” Below are Mike Whites's books, available to purchase individually or as a set. Photo: Courtesy of Jason Yokobosky

Mike White'S FAVORITE BOOKS

“My mother was a French teacher, so literature was very important to the family,” says Francois Ozon, the acclaimed film director behind such contemporary classics as 8 Women and Swimming Pool. The director, who in 2002 adapted one of his favorite novels - Elizabeth Taylor’s Angel - describes his childhood reading as a way to understand the world. “I was so curious as a young child, and I was a dreamer, and books were a way to discover the other side of my reality,” he says. “It’s like finding the secret behind the door. My problem with literature now is that I’m always thinking as a director, so when I read a book I’m viewing it through a director’s prism: would it make a good movie? When I was young and only dreaming of becoming a director I could be fully lost in a book.” Ozon's latest movie, Summer of '85, is currently on general release. Below are Francois Ozon's favorite books, available to purchase individually or as a set.

Francois Ozon'S FAVORITE BOOKS

After emigrating from Vietnam with his parents as a child, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer and its upcoming sequel The Committed, Viet Thanh Nguyen spent hours immersed at the local public library in rural Pennsylvania, where his family was relocated. "I vividly remember Curious George, Tintin, Encyclopedia Brown and the Hardy Boys," Nguyen recalls. Now, as a father to Ellison, 7, and Simone, 1, Nguyen is revisiting both the classics he remembers from his youth and books he overlooked. "I remember not being attracted to books like Madeline, Babar and Where the Wild Things Are " he says, "whereas I find them more interesting now. Many of these books bear the marks of their time, for good and bad, and I do read some of them with Ellison and try to contextualize them if necessary."  His daughter Simone, meanwhile "can almost say 'book' and has her own library, which she loves to delve into. She picks out favorite books, holds them on her lap, and turns the pages. I’m happy that I’ve developed a culture of reading for them." Though Nguyen is predictably busy as a novelist, the critic-at-large at The Los Angeles Times and a professor of English at the University of Southern California, he makes sure to involve himself in the literary world of his children too. "Although I have a limited interest in the children’s versions of superhero stories that my son loves. But his passion for Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Captain Underpants, The Bad Guys, Hilo, and Dogman have brought those books to me, which I think are great. I wish I had had them when I was a kid. They’re great stories and they don’t come with the racial and colonial baggage of the books I had. I’m looking forward to the young adult world of literature that he’ll expose me to." Below are Viet's favorite books, available to purchase individually or as a set.

Viet Thanh Nguyen'S FAVORITE BOOKS

“I think bad writing is essential,” Avni Doshi told The Rumpus. “Bad writing is the most important thing for learning how to write.” It took eight drafts before Doshi felt ready to publish her debut novel, Burnt Sugar, but the revisions paid off: the book landed on the 2020 Booker Prize shortlist. Built around a knotty mother-daughter relationship in Pune, India, the book has earned plaudits for Doshi’s refusal to sugarcoat her protagonist, making her challenging to like. "I wanted to push boundaries," she has said. "If that ends up feeling destabilizing for the reader, that’s okay." Born in New Jersey, Avni Doshi moved to India, after completing an MA in London, to curate, and write about, South Asian contemporary art. It was there in 2012 that she wrote what would become the first draft of Burnt Sugar, winning the Tibor Jones South Asia prize for an unpublished manuscript and, with it, an agent. Check out draft number 8, which has just been published stateside by The Overlook Press, available here. Below are Avni Doshi's favorite books, available to purchase individually or as a set.

Avni Doshi'S FAVORITE BOOKS