Miranda July's Reading List
The director, screenwriter, actor, artist and author, most recently, of "The First Bad Man," can't stand Garfield. "That dumb man and his dumb, mean cat have gotten more of our attention than they deserve."
Open in WellRead Daily app →By the Book: Miranda July (2015)
NYT By the Book column (2015-01-07).
Source: www.nytimes.com
James Baldwin · Buy on Amazon
"There are formative books I loved as a teenager, like "Giovanni's Room" (James Baldwin)."
D. H. Lawrence · Buy on Amazon
"There are formative books I loved as a teenager, like … "Women in Love" (D. H. Lawrence)."
E. M. Forster · Buy on Amazon
"There are formative books I loved as a teenager, like … "Maurice" (E. M. Forster)."
Karl Ove Knausgaard · Buy on Amazon
"I'm looking for things I almost don't like or can't fully understand, for example Karl Ove Knausgaard's book about angels, "A Time for Everything.""
Jane Bowles · Buy on Amazon
"Sheila Heti was dismayed I hadn't read "Two Serious Ladies" (Jane Bowles), and yes, it couldn't be more up my alley — I loved it."
Diane Cook · Buy on Amazon
"Her book "Man v. Nature" is a knockout. Also, and I don't usually say this, every single story could make a great movie."
Unknown · Buy on Amazon
""A Little Princess," "The Secret Garden" — and a less famous book in the same vein called "Mandy," about an orphan who makes a little secret home for herself in the woods."
Unknown · Buy on Amazon
""A Little Princess," "The Secret Garden" — and a less famous book in the same vein called "Mandy.""
Unknown · Buy on Amazon
"A less famous book in the same vein called "Mandy," about an orphan who makes a little secret home for herself in the woods. The common theme here is orphaned girls who make secret, special places for themselves. That's my core identity."
Favorite books (2021)
Favorite books recommended by Miranda July, as compiled by radicalreads.com. Source article: https://radicalreads.com/miranda-july-favorite-books/.
Source: radicalreads.com
Jim Goldberg · Buy on Amazon
"The format of this book is part of what makes it so great — that the subjects, very rich people and very poor people, got to see Goldberg’s portrait and write a sentence upon looking at themselves. It’s easy to objectify a subject — but also really easy to simply invite them to speak."
Nina Berberova and Marian Schwartz · Buy on Amazon
"I don’t even know how I came across this book, but I read the title story every few years and just feel SO SAD. I thought my life would slip right through my fingers as it did for this narrator, and though it hasn’t…it also has. Super Russian."
Friedl Kubelka Vom Groller, Melanie Ohnemus, Andrea Picard · Buy on Amazon
"I got this book a couple years ago and since then two people have bought it for me — and they are right to! The very specific, imperfect femininity — the sense of one woman’s struggle to make art — that’s my bailiwick."
Phoebe Gloeckner · Buy on Amazon
"I was in a unique position to be influenced by this book because my parents published it when I was in my twenties (long before Marielle Heller made it into a great movie). It is the most graphic of all the graphic novels I own — and all from the point of view of a teenage girl."
Anonymous (also rec’d by Leonard Cohen & Nipsey Hussle ) · Buy on Amazon
"I’ve been using the same I Ching since I was teenager when it was given to me by a fellow teenager; it seems too late to change now. I don’t use it often, but when I do it really does help. You can fool yourself, but not the I Ching."
Lorrie Moore (also rec’d by Carrie Brownstein & St. Vincent ) · Buy on Amazon
"Long before I started to write in earnest, Lorrie Moore taught me you could have a woman narrator who was funny and complex and even wrong-headed. She opened up a lot of space that me and a million other women rushed into."
Studs Terkel · Buy on Amazon
"There’s no law against asking strangers about their lives and feelings, although sometimes it really feels like there is. This is the kind of thing I want to read all day long, on every aspect of life (and there’s more, Terkel collected oral histories on race, the great depression, movies and plays, etc.)"
Ben Okri · Buy on Amazon
"I am a big fan of work in any medium that can take on death — being dead, being a soul — in a new way. It shares something with my favorite aspects of George Saunders in its matter of fact dealings with what might be considered supernatural."
Sophie Calle · Buy on Amazon
"Sophie Calle taught me that art isn’t this thing apart from your life, your embarrassing life as woman, girlfriend, person who longed — all that could be art if you were smart and elegant enough to notice what makes something interesting."