Read theROOM

Ten illustrious bookworms share their recent favorites

Keziah Weir

LUPITA NYONG'O

ACTOR, AQUIET PLACE: DAY ONE

"I love that world," says the actor of Brian K. Vaughan's space fantasy comic, Saga—one of her frequent rereads. "He writes in such a clipped way, and there's a vibe to his writing that I really enjoy."

JON FAVREAU AUTHOR,DEMOCRACY OR ELSE

The Pod Save America cohost says Eric Klinenberg's 2020: One City, Seven People, and the Year Everything Changed gave him hope of regaining "the sense of solidarity and community we lost" in the pandemic.

DUALIPA

SINGER-SONGWRITER, RADICAL OPTIMISM

The self-described "back catalog kind of girl" and founder of the editorial platform Service95 is "obsessed" with George Orwell's 1984: "It could have been written as a comment on our world today."

NATE SILVER

AUTHOR, ONTHE EDGE

For the FiveThirtyEight founder, Ben Smith's Traffic is "the best history I've read of the online content game and the personalities who are attracted to it, and the frequent missteps they've made" chasing "eyeballs and page views."

AMANDA GORMAN

POET, "THIS SACRED SCENE"

Burnout by sisters Emily and Amelia Nagoski served, for the country's first youth poet laureate, as "a fun but deeply science-based book that can help transform your life and the decisions you make."

ROBIN WALL KIMMERER AUTHOR,THE SERVICEBERRY

How to "choose just one book?" the botanist asks. Still, Leslie Mormon Silko's Gardens in the Dunes, a "powerful story" of Indigenous women's identity and their cultural plants, "lifts me up."

ANNAWEYANT

ARTIST, "WHO'S AFRAID OF THE BIG BAD WOLVES?"

"I adore Setsuko's work," says the painter. Into Nature shows "how she creates her beautiful sculptures and paintings" through installation images and personal photos.

KAVEH AKRAR

AUTHOR,MARTYR!

The poet and novelist says of Lena Khalaf Tuffaha's Something About Living: "The joy in Tuffaha's poems is always a joy made wise by having known profound grief; their rage arises from a surfeit of tenderness."

KAIAGERRER

ACTOR,SATURDAY NIGHT

In Dear Dickhead, Virginie Despentes "casually swings around big ideas of antiwokeness, gender, addiction," and more, says the cofounder of the reading platform Library Science.

LAURA RAMOSO

COMEDIAN, SIT UP STRAIGHT TOUR

Despite being "not typically a self-help kind of reader," the comedian says Steven Pressfield's The War of Art is her "favorite book of all time." It's "kind of like my Bible...except with a lot more swearing."