Iconic and inimitable, Julia Roberts has held court as one of Hollywood’s finest leading ladies since the early ’90s. From Mystic Pizza and Steel Magnolias to Erin Brockovich and Eat Pray Love, she’s brought her charisma and signature smile to a slew of compelling stories.
On the books that mean the most to her, Roberts told O Magazine:
“I believe in the power of timing. Certain books have come into my life in such a way that I can’t help but think, ‘This is the perfect time for me to be reading this.'”
Find her favorites below, and complement with the reading lists of Cate Blanchett and Emma Watson.
The Wild Palms by William Faulkner (also rec’d by Gabriel García Márquez)
“This would have to be my favorite classic novel. It’s such a beautiful, tragic love story—a book that will just destroy you. And Faulkner’s language is so utterly descriptive. He can write an entire page that consists of only adjectives and two commas. Actually, he’s the reason I ended up passing high school English, because my punctuation was always kind of…eccentric. I would say to my teacher, ‘Well, you know, William Faulkner—he doesn’t use proper punctuation.’ And one of my teachers ended up devising a system with two grades, where you were graded on content and then on whether it was properly written.” -JR
An Imaginative Woman by Thomas Hardy
“I love Thomas Hardy. I don’t think a lot of people know that he was also a great poet and a writer of short stories because he produced so many novels. One of my favorite short stories—and I’m not a big short story fan—is An Imaginative Woman. It’s tragic. People are going to think I’m morbid, loving all these sad books. I actually don’t mind a happy ending in a novel—certainly, it’s nice when it happens. But when you’ve invested so much time and your fingers have pushed through all that paper and you get to the end…well, a tragic ending kind of goes with the tragedy of finishing a book.” -JR
Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson
“Jeanette Winterson has written many fabulous books, and I just think, ‘How does this woman sleep?’ This story is so intriguing. One of the things that’s amazing—I don’t know how far into the book I realized it—is that one of the main characters is referred to in a really unspecific way in terms of gender. But I don’t know if Winterson intends for people to know this before they read the book. It’s kind of like you choose what gender the narrator is. And she actually pulls this off without the story seeming confusing—and without you even really noticing what she’s done.” -JR
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
“This book was a gift. And when I first started reading it, I thought, ‘This is what happens when someone who doesn’t know you very well gives you a book.’ After the first two pages, I thought, ‘This is a little, um, different, taking place more than a thousand years ago and all.’ And then I was hooked. It was riveting—the wives of Jacob, telling biblical stories from their perspective. This isn’t my standard pick, and I don’t know if everybody would embrace it, but it’s just wonderful.” -JR
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers (also rec’d by Gloria Steinem)
“One of the most amazing books I ever read was The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. McCullers was southern, and I’m southern. I wonder how much a non-southern person can appreciate some of the nuances that I consider very specific to that part of the country. In the subtlest, most unconscious ways, I’m able to get her description of, I don’t know, humidity in a way that somebody who lives near the Great Lakes will never really know. It was published when McCullers was, what—23 years old? I was still taking hour-long naps when I was 23. How remarkable that she had all that talent at her disposal at that age.” -JR
(via O Magazine)