“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

“Almost no rock, leaf or cubic foot of air on Earth has escaped our clumsy signature” writes Nathaniel Rich in his celebrated new essay collection, Second Nature, in which he explores humanity’s relationship with nature, and the sometimes extraordinary passion and purpose people bring to the battle to preserve what remains. The American novelist and essayist is also the author of Losing Earth: A Recent History, as well as the novels King Zeno, Odds Against Tomorrow, and The Mayor's Tongue. The son of writers Frank Rich and Alex Witchel, Rich cites Martin Amis, J. G. Ballard, and Margaret Atwood among his favorite writers, but for this list he chose to stick to books that illuminate the complexity of our relationship to the natural world. In a summer season that has seen unparalleled temperatures in Canada and parts of the western United States, the message of these ten books could hardly feel more urgent.

Nathaniel Rich'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

As a young playwright, Jon Robin Baitz, who was born in Los Angeles but grew up in part in South Africa, established his reputation with a series of witty, literary, acutely-observed plays including The Film Society (1988) and The Substance of Fire (1992). He was a finalist for the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his semi-autobiographical play, A Fair Country,  and again in 2011 for his family reunion drama, Other Desert Cities.  Widely associated with the ABC series Brothers & Sisters, which he created and produced for two seasons (before departing over creative differences), Baitz has a rare ability to tell it as he sees it. His columns for HuffPost in its formative years remain fresh and pertinent today. “Our mainstream culture encourages an anodyne internal shut-off of the heart, and of the senses by which we see and hear that which is real, that which matters,” he wrote in 2009. “You have to be outraged in order to be an American, and you have to be hopeful, and work hard to make this country better, or it is not going to survive.” Of the books that have left their imprimatur on his life, he says, "My list has been Hollywood/male/monster-centric, but these are part of my subject, and what I know. My list of the unread is shameful, but starts with Memories of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar and maybe I get to  Emile Zola’s The Belly of Paris. I know books will save us, because they are saving me yet again. They can save almost, almost anyone, or at least, a small tribe that was blessed with a love for them." Below are Jon Robin Baitz's favorite books, available to purchase individually or as a set

Jon Robin Baitz'S FAVORITE BOOKS