LATEST BOOKSHELVES
A pivotal force in contemporary dance, Janet Eilber has danced at the White House, danced with Rudolf Nuryev, and most importantly, danced for Martha Graham. It was Graham who mentored Eilber as a young dancer – coaching her in her famous “contraction and release” method – eventually leading to Eilber’s appointment as Artistic Director of the Martha Graham Dance Company, School, and Archive in 2005. She is still there, commissioning work that embodies and expands on Graham’s legacy. “Martha is compared to Picasso and Stravinksy because she made such a seismic shift,” Eilber has said. “Her discoveries were so radical.” That radicalism lives on, cemented and extended by Eilber's leadership. Founded in 1926, the Martha Graham Dance Company is not only the oldest contemporary dance company in America, but one of its most dynamic, producing new work and interpretations of classics at a remarkable pace. Did we mention that Eilber also played the co-star and love interest to Rick Springfield in the 1984 movie, Hard to Hold?
Below are Janet Eilber’s favorite books, available to purchase individually or as a set.
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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
“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, 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 an Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series, Movie, or Dramatic Special at the 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards, making her the first black woman to win that category. She will next write, star in and executive produce First Day On Earth, a 10-part series for the BBC.
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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