Julianne Moore's Reading List

"This is Eisenberg’s first collection of stories – and many of them hinge on how our perception of the world can be irrevocably changed. In the title story, a character answers the phone, and as she talks to the caller, a former lover, she glances toward the man she’s having a drink with: ‘He seemed like a scrap of paper, or the handle from a broken cup, or a single rubber band – a thing that has become dislodged from its rightful place.’ I so responded to this wonderful notion that you can lo..."

"My favorite essay in this collection is ‘Goodbye to All That.’ One quote has always resonated with me: ‘I was late to meet someone, but I stopped at Lexington Avenue and bought a peach and stood on the corner eating it and knew that I had come out of the West and reached the mirage.’ As a child, I lived all over the world – we moved a million zillion times – and I never felt completely happy until I was in New York City. Like Didion, I felt that I’d reached the mirage; I’d found a place where..."

"My brother wrote this book – I had to put it on my list. It’s a thriller, but it’s also about the disintegration of a family and the ways in which our desire to protect one another can be destructive. I always thought writers were the bravest people, because they seemed to reveal so much of themselves in their work. My brother gave me an understanding of the process. He can take his experience and turn it 190 degrees, and it becomes something else, which is what I do with acting. He’s made th..."

"I’ve had a copy of this book since I was 18 years old. I used it when I was hoping that I wasn’t pregnant, when I was hoping that I was, during my pregnancies, after my pregnancies, whenever I was sick. Two weeks ago, I was in bed with this horrible fever; I thought, ‘This is the flu.’ But on Monday, when I still had this ridiculous fever, I opened the book and realized I had an infection from nursing. It’s a little crunchy in tone, but it’s the best women’s health reference book I’ve ever seen."