LATEST BOOKSHELVES
Sera Gamble is the screenwriter and showrunner for the hit Hetflix series You, based on the novels of Caroline Kepnes, in which the romantic hero is not just a pretty face - he’s a serial killer as well. You is not the first book that Gamble has turned into darkly entertaining television. She also created The Magicians for the SyFy Channel, based on the best-selling novel by Lev Grossman. And she was a showrunner on Supernatural, a haunting fantasy series which ran for 15 seasons. She has said, “I’m a horror writer in my heart, in that I always like to ask myself what scares me, and what scares us universally when I’m approaching a story. To me there’s just about nothing scarier than the truth that we can never really know another person.” Below are Sera Gamble's favorite books, available to purchase individually or as a set.
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LATEST BOOKSHELVES
It took William Boyd three failed attempts at writing a novel before he hit gold with A Good Man in Africa, which won him both the Whitbread Book Award for a first novel and the Somerset Maugham Award. That was in 1981, and Boyd hasn’t stopped to draw breath since. This year he has published both the paperback version of his 16th novel, Trio, and the hardback of his 17th novel, The Romantic, another sweeping panorama of one man's life, this time set against the tumultuous years of the 19th century. Boyd has also published four collections of short stories and written 20 screen plays Among his other achievements is bringing James Bond back to life, in the novel Solo–in which the martini-swigging spy undertakes a mission to the fictionalized West African country of Zanzarim - a stand in for the Nigeria in which Boyd spent his youth. Below are William Boyd's favorite books, available to purchase individually or as a set.
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LATEST BOOKSHELVES
“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.
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LATEST BOOKSHELVES
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
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LATEST BOOKSHELVES
“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.
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