Emily Ratajkowski's Reading List

"I read this book my senior year of high school. It was one of those books that people were always talking about, but it had never been assigned to me. I can’t remember why I actually picked it up, but I immediately became obsessed with it when I did, and read it in three days. I remember sitting on a bed—it was actually my boyfriend’s bed—and sobbing when I finished it. He came in and was like, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ I think it’s one of those books that should be required reading for young..."

"I really admire bell hooks for how plainly and directly she writes. She has no pretentious aspirations in her writing; rather she is just specific and deliberate. This is one of her more recent books, and it entails a really refreshing marriage between a spiritual and intellectual approach to understanding what love is and what it’s capable of doing for us. It’s a beautiful book that has a lot of hope in it. It would make a great gift."

"Lucia Berlin lived her life as an unknown writer who worked as a cleaning lady. This is a collection of short stories put together after her death; they are stories, but I think it’s understood that they are thinly veiled fiction, and you do feel you’re getting to know her as a person as well as a writer when you read them. The publisher did a wonderful job putting the stories together; they build on one another, and the book is really enjoyable to read as a whole. There is something very rou..."

"Even though I was a little young for it, it taught me so much about race, women, and power; it was kind of my intro to those ideas."

"It was not the first Didion I’d ever read, but it was one that I felt instantly sucked in by and it kind of reads like a fever dream, so it’s really good one to read in one go."

"She’s able to go from texting to real-life conversations to emails in a way that’s really special."