This past weekend we saw some of our favorite actors get recognition for their works at the Oscars. The winner for Best Actress in a supporting role was one of our favorites: Jamie Lee Curtis. In 2020, Curtis went on the Today show and announced some of her favorite books, whether they brought her nostalgia, like Go, Dog. Go by P.D. Eastman and The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear, or books that changed her life.
Stoner by John Williams - Jamie Lee Curtis' top three favorite books
William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar’s life, so different from the hardscrabble existence he has known. And yet as the years pass, Stoner encounters a succession of disappointments: marriage into a “proper” family estranges him from his parents; his career is stymied; his wife and daughter turn coldly away from him; a transforming experience of new love ends under threat of scandal. Driven ever deeper within himself, Stoner rediscovers the stoic silence of his forebears and confronts an essential solitude.
East of Eden by John Steinbeck - Curtis' said that this is the book that changed her life
This sprawling and often brutal novel, set in the rich farmlands of California's Salinas Valley, follows the intertwined destinies of two families - the Trasks and the Hamiltons - whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.
King Rat by James Clavell - Curtis read this book at age 13 and 'devoured' it. She said this ignited her love for historical fiction
The time is World War II. The place is a brutal prison camp deep in Japanese-occupied territory. Here, within the seething mass of humanity, one man, an American corporal, seeks dominance over both captives and captors alike. His weapons are human courage, unblinking understanding of human weaknesses, and total willingness to exploit every opportunity to enlarge his power and corrupt or destroy anyone who stands in his path.
