Colin Firth's Reading List

"I wouldn’t give a damn about the world of this book were it not for the fact that Lampedusa draws you into it in such an intoxicating fashion. The descriptions of 19th-century Sicily were written with such melancholy, honesty and lack of sentimentality that I found myself thinking this era was the most important thing. What blew me away, though, were the passages about death."

"It’s not the sheer art of Faulkner’s literary experimentation that I admire. I’m haunted by the heat he describes and by the smells, which are almost always revolting. I know that’s a strange reason to be attracted to an author, but I love it when writing is as potent as it is here. This novel is about sexual revulsion, racial revulsion, self-revulsion. It’s such uncomfortable reading for modern audiences. The problem with racial identity is overwhelming to the main character, Joe Christmas...."

"Franzen captures how trivializing a family battle can be and how it can seem to be a fight for survival when, in fact, you’re simply scoring points. Chip represents so much of what I’m familiar with: highly intelligent, educated people who become fractured and cast adrift. You can liberate yourself from the rules, decide you don’t want to be on the treadmill, you’re not going to be Joe Schmo—but once you’ve cut loose from all that, you can be quite lost. Franzen shows how often love between t..."