Jon Hamm's Reading List

"I love reading plays. Part of the reason I became an actor was that I would read one and think, ‘Ah, it’d be fun to be in that.’ Arcadia is about the discovery of certain theories of physics and math, but it’s also a love story—a sad love story—infused with ideas of early feminism and the Industrial Revolution. The action bounces back and forth between the early 1800s and modern times stylistically and smoothly. And the words are just beautiful. Stoppard has an amazing command of the English..."

"I was a kid when this book came out in the ’70s. I had a bunch of Steve Martin and George Carlin records, and the absurd humor that these guys presented, especially Martin, was incredibly appealing to me. The title story, ‘Cruel Shoes,’ is about an unwearable pair of shoes a woman has to own. Another, called ‘The Smokers,’ which is very funny, is about how much people enjoy their smoking. He uses the word smoke probably 50 times in a two-page piece, and the final sentence is: ‘And then his li..."

"The first work of Chabon’s that I read was The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. He writes intricate novels that are funny and touching and heartbreaking, but they’re not simple. His characters tend to be creative types—which obviously resonates with me, given what I do—who are also conflicted. In this novel, a writer and college professor is endlessly working on a book and trying to live up to the success he had early in his career. Anybody who’s had that experience, especially in an artistic endeavo..."

"This book is, essentially, a look at the universe and what sorts of laws govern it. For the past 80 years, there’s been an attempt to unify all these laws into one theory. The problem is, the more scientists figure out, the more difficult it becomes. They’ve come up with incredibly futuristic solutions like string theory and alternate universes—ideas that 30 years ago you would have thought were strictly the domain of science fiction, like flying cars and thinking robots. Greene describes the..."

"Foucault’s Pendulum isn’t an easy read, but it’s a super-satisfying one. It’s an incredibly complicated mystery about art and religion. The story is told in an interesting style of two twisting narratives (one about the main character and the other about the people following him). I read The Da Vinci Code in three days; this novel took a few weeks, because it works on a deeper level and Eco creates this dense web of intrigue. His style is self-referential—he is a big fan of the writer Jorge L..."