Books from Natalie Portman

Sapiens

**THE MILLION COPY BESTSELLER** What makes us brilliant? What makes us deadly? What makes us Sapiens? This bestselling history challenges everything we know about being human.Earth is 4.5 billion years old. In just a fraction of that time, one species among countless others has conquered it: us.In this bold and provocative book, Yuval Noah Harari explores who we are, how we got here and where we’re going. ‘I would recommend Sapiens to anyone who’s interested in the history and future of our species’ Bill Gates ‘Interesting and provocative... It gives you a sense of how briefly we’ve been on this Earth’ Barack Obama**ONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21st CENTURY**
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
The book that:…shaped my worldview: Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari.
Books from Natalie Portman

The Neapolitan Novels

In one volume, the New York Times–bestselling epic about hardship and female friendship in postwar Naples that has sold over five million copies. Beginning with My Brilliant Friend, the four Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante follow Elena and Lila, from their rough-edged upbringing in Naples, Italy, not long after WWII, through the many stages of their lives—and along paths that diverge wildly. Sometimes they are separated by jealousy or hostility or physical distance, but the bond between them is unbreakable, for better or for worse. This volume includes all four novels: My Brilliant Friend; The Story of a New Name; Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay; and The Story of the Lost Child. “Imagine if Jane Austen got angry and you’ll have some idea of how explosive these works are.” —The Australian “Nothing you read about Elena Ferrante’s work prepares you for the ferocity of it.” —The New York Times “An enduring masterpiece.” —The Atlantic
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
The book that:…made me miss my vacation: Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels—I couldn’t stop reading.
Books from Natalie Portman

Vladimir

An NPR, Washington Post, Time, People, Vulture, Guardian, Vox, Kirkus Reviews, Newsweek, LitHub, and New York Public Library Best Book of the Year * “Delightful…cathartic, devious, and terrifically entertaining.” —The New York Times * “Timely, whip-smart, and darkly funny.” —People (Book of the Week) A provocative, razor-sharp, and timely debut novel about a beloved English professor facing a slew of accusations against her professor husband by former students—a situation that becomes more complicated when she herself develops an obsession of her own... “When I was a child, I loved old men, and I could tell that they also loved me.” And so we are introduced to our narrator who’s “a work of art in herself” (The Washington Post): a popular English professor whose charismatic husband at the same small liberal arts college is under investigation for his inappropriate relationships with his former students. The couple have long had a mutual understanding when it comes to their extra-marital pursuits, but with these new allegations, life has become far less comfortable for them both. And when our narrator becomes increasingly infatuated with Vladimir—a celebrated, married young novelist who’s just arrived on campus—their tinder box world comes dangerously close to exploding. “Timely, whip-smart, and darkly funny” (People), Vladimir takes us into charged territory, where the boundaries of morality bump up against the impulses of the human heart. This edgy, uncommonly assured debut perfectly captures the personal and political minefield of our current moment, exposing the nuances and the grey area between power and desire.
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
A friend recommended this book and I can’t wait to read! @juliamaynot’s Vladimir follows a married literature professor who becomes obsessed with an experimental writer.
Books from Natalie Portman

Poet Warrior

National bestseller An ALA Notable Book Three-term poet laureate Joy Harjo offers a vivid, lyrical, and inspiring call for love and justice in this contemplation of her trailblazing life. Joy Harjo, the first Native American to serve as U.S. poet laureate, invites us to travel along the heartaches, losses, and humble realizations of her "poet-warrior" road. A musical, kaleidoscopic, and wise follow-up to Crazy Brave, Poet Warrior reveals how Harjo came to write poetry of compassion and healing, poetry with the power to unearth the truth and demand justice. Harjo listens to stories of ancestors and family, the poetry and music that she first encountered as a child, and the messengers of a changing earth—owls heralding grief, resilient desert plants, and a smooth green snake curled up in surprise. She celebrates the influences that shaped her poetry, among them Audre Lorde, N. Scott Momaday, Walt Whitman, Muscogee stomp dance call-and-response, Navajo horse songs, rain, and sunrise. In absorbing, incantatory prose, Harjo grieves at the loss of her mother, reckons with the theft of her ancestral homeland, and sheds light on the rituals that nourish her as an artist, mother, wife, and community member. Moving fluidly between prose, song, and poetry, Harjo recounts a luminous journey of becoming, a spiritual map that will help us all find home. Poet Warrior sings with the jazz, blues, tenderness, and bravery that we know as distinctly Joy Harjo.
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
I love the way Joy Harjo’s Poet Warrior blends poetry and memoir.
Books from Natalie Portman

Cassandra at the Wedding

Cassandra Edwards is a graduate student at Berkeley: gay, brilliant, nerve-racked, miserable. At the beginning of this novel, she drives back to her family ranch in the foothills of the Sierras to attend the wedding of her identical twin, Judith, to a nice young doctor from Connecticut. Cassandra, however, is hell-bent on sabotaging the wedding. Dorothy Baker’s entrancing tragicomic novella follows an unpredictable course of events in which her heroine appears variously as conniving, self-aware, pitiful, frenzied, absurd, and heartbroken—at once utterly impossible and tremendously sympathetic. As she struggles to come to terms with the only life she has, Cassandra reckons with her complicated feelings about the sister who she feels owes it to her to be her alter ego; with her father, a brandy-soaked retired professor of philosophy; and with the ghost of her dead mother. First published in 1962, Cassandra at the Wedding is a book of enduring freshness, insight, and verve. Like the fiction of Jeffrey Eugenides and Jhumpa Lahiri, it is the work of a master stylist with a profound understanding of the complexities of the heart and mind.
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
I decided to join the party and read Cassandra at the Wedding this month. First published in 1962, the novel follows Cassandra, a queer Berkeley grad student intent on sabotaging her twin sister’s wedding. The book was recently rereleased and rediscovered, and I am among its ardent fans. Hope you love it as much as I do.
Books from Natalie Portman

A Sister's Story

A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF 2022 FINALIST FOR THE 2021 STREGA PRIZE From the internationally acclaimed author of A Girl Returned, a spellbinding story about family, memory, love, and the relationships that define us. It's the darkest time of night. Adriana, a baby in her arms, hammers on her sister's door. Who is she running from? What uncomfortable truth is she carrying with her? Like a whirlwind, Adriana upends her sister's life bringing chaos and cataclysmic revelations. Years later, the narrator gets an unexpected, urgent summons back to Pescara, her hometown. She embarks on a long journey through the night, and through the folds and twists of her memory, from her and her sister's youth, their loves and losses, secrets and regrets. Back in Borgo Sud, the town's fishermen's quarter, in that impenetrable yet welcoming microcosm, she will discover what really happened, and attempt to make peace with the past. Donatella Di Pietrantonio, expert chronicler of the bonds between mothers and daughters, revisits the places and characters of A Girl Returned with a moving novel focused on the ambivalent, ambiguous, wavering but steadfast relationship between sisters.
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
This book is wonderful — a super touching story of two sisters who mother themselves out of a curse and who are in and out of a complicated relationship with each other.
Books from Natalie Portman

The Family Roe: An American Story

Finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction Finalist for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction One of NPR's Best Books of 2021 A New York Times Notable Book of 2021 One of TIME's 100 Must-Read Books of 2021 "The scope is sweeping, the writing is beautiful. It’s an epic story worthy of the impact this one case has had on the American psyche." ? Michel Martin, NPR "Stupendous…. If you want to understand Roe more deeply before the coming decision, read it." ? Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal A masterpiece of reporting on the Supreme Court’s most divisive case, Roe v. Wade, and the unknown lives at its heart. Despite her famous pseudonym, “Jane Roe,” no one knows the truth about Norma McCorvey (1947–2017), whose unwanted pregnancy in 1969 opened a great fracture in American life. Journalist Joshua Prager spent hundreds of hours with Norma, discovered her personal papers—a previously unseen trove—and witnessed her final moments. The Family Roe presents her life in full. Propelled by the crosscurrents of sex and religion, gender and class, it is a life that tells the story of abortion in America. Prager begins that story on the banks of Louisiana’s Atchafalaya River where Norma was born, and where unplanned pregnancies upended generations of her forebears. A pregnancy then upended Norma’s life too, and the Dallas waitress became Jane Roe. Drawing on a decade of research, Prager reveals the woman behind the pseudonym, writing in novelistic detail of her unknown life from her time as a sex worker in Dallas, to her private thoughts on family and abortion, to her dealings with feminist and Christian leaders, to the three daughters she placed for adoption. Prager found those women, including the youngest—Baby Roe—now fifty years old. She shares her story in The Family Roe for the first time, from her tortured interactions with her birth mother, to her emotional first meeting with her sisters, to the burden that was uniquely hers from conception. The Family Roe abounds in such revelations—not only about Norma and her children but about the broader “family” connected to the case. Prager tells the stories of activists and bystanders alike whose lives intertwined with Roe. In particular, he introduces three figures as important as they are unknown: feminist lawyer Linda Coffee, who filed the original Texas lawsuit yet now lives in obscurity; Curtis Boyd, a former fundamentalist Christian, today a leading provider of third-trimester abortions; and Mildred Jefferson, the first black female Harvard Medical School graduate, who became a pro-life leader with great secrets. An epic work spanning fifty years of American history, The Family Roe will change the way you think about our enduring American divide: the right to choose or the right to life.
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
I hope you’ll join me in reading Joshua Prager’s The Family Roe this month, a look at the complicated life of Jane Roe, a pseudonym for Norma McCorvey — the woman who enabled Americans to gain a right to abortion. It’s been harrowing to read McCorvey’s story following the Court’s decision to reverse Roe, but it’s a story that deserves our understanding.
Books from Natalie Portman

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE "A brilliant literary murder mystery." —Chicago Tribune "Extraordinary. Tokarczuk's novel is funny, vivid, dangerous, and disturbing, and it raises some fierce questions about human behavior. My sincere admiration for her brilliant work." —Annie ProulxIn a remote Polish village, Janina devotes the dark winter days to studying astrology, translating the poetry of William Blake, and taking care of the summer homes of wealthy Warsaw residents. Her reputation as a crank and a recluse is amplified by her not-so-secret preference for the company of animals over humans. Then a neighbor, Big Foot, turns up dead. Soon other bodies are discovered, in increasingly strange circumstances. As suspicions mount, Janina inserts herself into the investigation, certain that she knows whodunit. If only anyone would pay her mind . . .A deeply satisfying thriller cum fairy tale, Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead is a provocative exploration of the murky borderland between sanity and madness, justice and tradition, autonomy and fate. Whom do we deem sane? it asks. Who is worthy of a voice?
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
Loving the way this fablelike Polish novel blends mystery, dark comedy, politics, and philosophy. As Janina, an astrologist who prefers the company of animals, sets out to investigate the dead bodies turning up around her, there is friction between Janina and the hunters. I hope you’ll join me this month in reading!
Books from Natalie Portman

Fruiting Bodies: Stories

Finalist for the 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction One of Vulture's Best Books of the Year This genre-bending debut collection of stories constructs eight eerie worlds full of desire, wisdom, and magic blooming amidst decay. In stories that beckon and haunt, Fruiting Bodies ranges confidently from the fantastical to the gothic to the uncanny as it follows characters—mostly queer, mostly women—on the precipice of change. Echoes of timeless myth and folklore reverberate through urgent narratives of discovery, appetite, and coming-of-age in a time of crisis. In “The Changeling,” two young cousins wait in dread for a new family member to arrive, convinced that he may be a dangerous supernatural creature. In “Endangered Animals,” Jane prepares to say goodbye to her almost-love while they road-trip across a country irrevocably altered by climate change. In “Take Only What Belongs to You,” a queer woman struggles with the personal history of an author she idolized, while in “Fiddler, Fool, Pair,” an anthropologist is drawn into a magical—and dangerous—gamble. In the title story, partners Agnes and Geb feast peacefully on the mushrooms that sprout from Agnes’s body—until an unwanted male guest disturbs their cloistered home. Audacious, striking, and wholly original, Fruiting Bodies offers stories about knowledge in a world on the verge of collapse, knowledge that alternately empowers or devastates. Pulling beautifully, brazenly, from a variety of literary traditions, Kathryn Harlan firmly establishes herself as a thrilling new voice in fiction.
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
Already captivated by Harlan’s imaginative stories, set against the backdrop of climate change and altered magical worlds. Can’t wait for you to read along with me.
Books from Natalie Portman

Simple Passion

WINNER OF THE 2022 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATUREA New York Times Notable BookIn her spare, stark style, Annie Ernaux documents the desires and indignities of a human heart ensnared in an all-consuming passion.Blurring the line between fact and fiction, an unnamed narrator attempts to plot the emotional and physical course of her 2 year relationship with a married foreigner where every word, event, and person either provides a connection with her beloved or is subject to her cold indifference.With courage and exactitude, she seeks the truth behind an existence lived entirely for someone else, and, in the pieces of its aftermath, she is able to find it.
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
Seems like the right time for Annie Ernaux’s Simple Passion — a portrait of a woman’s love affair and its aftermath. And thank you to my friend Sylvia at @shakespeareandcoparis who recommended this book to me after Ernaux’s Nobel Prize win.
Books from Natalie Portman

Olga Dies Dreaming

'Deeply satisfying and nuanced . . . a tender exploration of love in its many forms' Observer 'Gonzalez couples engrossing political intrigue with engagingly flawed characters you can't help but root for' Mail on Sunday It's 2017, and Olga and her brother, Pedro 'Prieto' Acevedo, are bold-faced names in their hometown of New York. Prieto is a popular congressman representing their gentrifying, Latinx neighborhood in Brooklyn, while Olga is the tony wedding planner for Manhattan's power brokers.Despite their alluring public lives, behind closed doors things are far less rosy. Sure, Olga can orchestrate the love stories of the one percent, but she can't seem to find her own . . . until she meets Matteo, who forces her to confront the effects of long-held family secrets.Twenty-seven years ago, their mother, Blanca, a Young Lord-turned-radical, abandoned her children to advance a militant political cause, leaving them to be raised by their grandmother. Now, with the winds of hurricane season, Blanca has come barreling back into their lives.Set against the backdrop of New York City in the months surrounding the most devastating hurricane in Puerto Rico's history, Olga Dies Dreaming is a story that examines political corruption, familial strife and the very notion of the American dream - all while asking what it really means to weather a storm.
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
Got this one from the library! Our December pick follows a wedding planner grappling with her absent mother, Puerto Rican roots, and the notion of the American dream — all in the wake of Hurricane Maria.
Books from Natalie Portman

An Immense World

**SUNDAY TIMES and NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER****NEW YORK TIMES, NEW STATESMAN, OBSERVER, ECONOMIST, PROSPECT, GUARDIAN, TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT and SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022****Winner of 2023 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction**Enter a new dimension - the world as it is truly perceived by other animals.The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every animal is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving only a tiny sliver of an immense world. This book welcomes us into previously unfathomable dimensions - the world as it is truly perceived by other animals.We encounter beetles that are drawn to fires, turtles that can track the Earth's magnetic fields, fish that fill rivers with electrical messages, and humans that wield sonar like bats. We discover that a crocodile's scaly face is as sensitive as a lover's fingertips, that plants thrum with the inaudible songs of courting bugs, and that even simple scallops have complex vision.Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the threads of scent, waves of electromagnetism and pulses of pressure that surround us. Because in order to understand our world we need to see through other eyes.'Yong's colourful, character-filled writing reveals a multidimensional world that has hitherto remained hidden to us' Guardian, Books of the Year 2022'An Immense World... manages to be both a celebration of our species' genius for observation while also revealing how narrow and partial is our "sense" of things.' Mark Cocker, New Statesman Books of the Year 2022
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
A Hannuka present from my cousin Daniella and our January book pick! By taking a closer look at how animals perceive the world within their own sensory bubbles, Yong allows us to see beyond the confines of our senses.
Books from Natalie Portman

Assembly

SHORTLISTED FOR THE FOLIO PRIZE 2022SHORTLISTED FOR THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE 2021SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION 2022 SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKS ARE MY BAG FICTION AWARD 2021SHORTLISTED FOR THE BETTY TRASK PRIZE 2022LONGLISTED FOR THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE 2022'Diamond-sharp, timely and urgent' Observer, Best Debuts of 2021'Subtle, elegant, scorching' Vogue'Virtuosic, exquisite, achingly unique' Guardian'I'm full of the hope, on reading it, that this is the kind of book that doesn't just mark the moment things change, but also makes that change possible' Ali Smith'Exquisite, daring, utterly captivating. A stunning new writer' Bernardine EvaristoCome of age in the credit crunch. Be civil in a hostile environment. Step out into a world of Go Home vans. Go to Oxbridge, get an education, start a career. Do all the right things. Buy a flat. Buy art. Buy a sort of happiness. But above all, keep your head down. Keep quiet. And keep going.The narrator of Assembly is a Black British woman. She is preparing to attend a lavish garden party at her boyfriend's family estate, set deep in the English countryside. At the same time, she is considering the carefully assembled pieces of herself. As the minutes tick down and the future beckons, she can't escape the question: is it time to take it all apart?'One of the most talked-about debuts of the year . . . You'll read it in one sitting' Sunday Times Style'Expertly crafted, remarkable, astonishing... A literary debut with flavours of Jordan Peele's Get Out' Bookseller, Editor's Choice'Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway meets Citizen by Claudia Rankine... As breathtakingly graceful as it is mercilessly true' Olivia Sudjic'Bold and original, with a cool intelligence, and so very truthful about the colonialist structure of British society' Diana Evans 'This marvel of a novel manages to say all there is to say about Britain today' Sabrina Mahfouz
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
Just started Assembly and I’m already captivated by Natasha Brown’s unique voice. The book is about a woman visiting her boyfriend’s family estate in the English countryside, and explores issues of identity and freedom, in gorgeous, innovative prose.
Books from Natalie Portman

Crying in H Mart

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • From the indie rockstar of Japanese Breakfast fame, and author of the viral 2018 New Yorker essay that shares the title of this book, an unflinching, powerful memoir about growing up Korean American, losing her mother, and forging her own identity.In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band--and meeting the man who would become her husband--her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother's diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Zauner's voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, and complete with family photos, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
If you haven’t yet read, join me in reading Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart this month — a portrait of how grief and identity and food converge in the wake of her mother’s passing.
Books from Natalie Portman

Women Without Men

A new translation of this classic work: “Parsipur is a courageous, talented woman and...a great writer.”—Marjane Satrapi
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
Banned in Iran shortly after its publication, Shahrnush Parsipur’s masterpiece explores feminism, sexuality, and friendship with such care, humor, and ingenuity. It’s a little bit mythic and magical and it will arm us all with a better understanding of life in Iran.
Books from Natalie Portman

The Lying Life of Adults

Soon to be a NETFLIX Original Series. A POWERFUL NEW NOVEL set in a divided Naples by ELENA FERRANTE, the New York Times best-selling author of My Brilliant Friend and The Lost Daughter. "There's no doubt [the publication of The Lying Life of Adults] will be the literary event of the year."--ELLE Magazine Giovanna's pretty face is changing, turning ugly, at least so her father thinks. Giovanna, he says, looks more like her Aunt Vittoria every day. But can it be true? Is she really changing? Is she turning into her Aunt Vittoria, a woman she hardly knows but whom her mother and father clearly despise? Surely there is a mirror somewhere in which she can see herself as she truly is. Giovanna is searching for her reflection in two kindred cities that fear and detest one another: Naples of the heights, which assumes a mask of refinement, and Naples of the depths, a place of excess and vulgarity. She moves from one to the other in search of the truth, but neither city seems to offer answers or escape. Named one of 2016's most influential people by TIME Magazine and frequently touted as a future Nobel Prize-winner, Elena Ferrante has become one of the world's most read and beloved writers. With this new novel about the transition from childhood to adolescence to adulthood, Ferrante proves once again that she deserves her many accolades. In The Lying Life of Adults, readers will discover another gripping, highly addictive, and totally unforgettable Neapolitan story. A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2020 The New York Times Book Review・Vogue・Entertainment Weekly・ELLE Magazine・BuzzFeed・The Millions・The Seattle Times・USA Today・Town & Country・Thrillist・Publishers Weekly・Library Journal・Harper's Bazaar・ BookPage・Literary Hub・BBC Culture
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
Elena Ferrante’s writing is ferocious and brutally honest and totally addictive. Her Neapolitan series and Days of Abandonment are among my favorite books ever— the kind of books you’re sad to finish because you feel so connected to the characters and their experiences. So the release of her newest book, The Lying Life of Adults, is a high point in my life right now and I’m so excited to get into the story of a teenager grappling with her family history. Read with me and let me know your thoughts?
Books from Natalie Portman

When They Call You a Terrorist

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. New York Times Editor’s Pick. Library Journal Best Books of 2019. TIME Magazine's "Best Memoirs of 2018 So Far."O, Oprah’s Magazine’s “10 Titles to Pick Up Now.” Politics & Current Events 2018 O.W.L. Book Awards Winner The Root Best of 2018"This remarkable book reveals what inspired Patrisse's visionary and courageous activism and forces us to face the consequence of the choices our nation made when we criminalized a generation. This book is a must-read for all of us." - Michelle Alexander, New York Times bestselling author of The New Jim CrowA poetic and powerful memoir about what it means to be a Black woman in America—and the co-founding of a movement that demands justice for all in the land of the free.Raised by a single mother in an impoverished neighborhood in Los Angeles, Patrisse Khan-Cullors experienced firsthand the prejudice and persecution Black Americans endure at the hands of law enforcement. For Patrisse, the most vulnerable people in the country are Black people. Deliberately and ruthlessly targeted by a criminal justice system serving a white privilege agenda, Black people are subjected to unjustifiable racial profiling and police brutality. In 2013, when Trayvon Martin’s killer went free, Patrisse’s outrage led her to co-found Black Lives Matter with Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi.Condemned as terrorists and as a threat to America, these loving women founded a hashtag that birthed the movement to demand accountability from the authorities who continually turn a blind eye to the injustices inflicted upon people of Black and Brown skin. Championing human rights in the face of violent racism, Patrisse is a survivor. She transformed her personal pain into political power, giving voice to a people suffering inequality and a movement fueled by her strength and love to tell the country—and the world—that Black Lives Matter. When They Call You a Terrorist is Patrisse Khan-Cullors and asha bandele’s reflection on humanity. It is an empowering account of survival, strength and resilience and a call to action to change the culture that declares innocent Black life expendable.
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
Read this book, please. When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir
Books from Natalie Portman

Something That May Shock and Discredit You

Named one of the most anticipated books of the year by Entertainment Weekly, O, The Oprah Magazine, BuzzFeed, Electric Literature, Yahoo Lifestyle, and Bitch Media “A delightful hybrid of a book… You’ll laugh, you'll cry, often both at once. Everyone should read this extraordinary book.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) From the New York Times bestselling author of Texts From Jane Eyre and Merry Spinster, writer of Slate’s “Dear Prudence” column, and cofounder of The Toast comes a hilarious and stirring collection of essays and cultural observations spanning pop culture—from the endearingly popular to the staggeringly obscure.Daniel Mallory Ortberg is known for blending genres, forms, and sources to develop fascinating new hybrids—from lyric rants to horror recipes to pornographic scripture. In his most personal work to date, he turns his attention to the essay, offering vigorous and laugh-out-loud funny accounts of both popular and highbrow culture while mixing in meditations on gender transition, family dynamics, and the many meanings of faith. From a thoughtful analysis of the beauty of William Shatner to a sinister reimagining of HGTV’s House Hunters, and featuring figures as varied as Anne of Green Gables, Columbo, Nora Ephron, Apollo, and the cast of Mean Girls, Something That May Shock and Discredit You is a hilarious and emotionally exhilarating compendium that combines personal history with cultural history to make you see yourself and those around you entirely anew. It further establishes Ortberg as one of the most innovative and engaging voices of his generation—and it may just change the way you think about Lord Byron forever.
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
I’m excited to read Something That May Shock and Discredit You: @daniel_m_lavery’s memoir on his transition, pop culture, and theology.
Books from Natalie Portman

Girl, Woman, Other

***WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019***SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERThis is Britain as you've never seen it.This is Britain as it has never been told.From Newcastle to Cornwall, from the birth of the twentieth century to the teens of the twenty-first, Girl Woman Other follows a cast of twelve characters on their personal journeys through this country and the last hundred years. They're each looking for something - a shared past, an unexpected future, a place to call home, somewhere to fit in, a lover, a missed mother, a lost father, even just a touch of hope . . . 'Masterful . . . A choral love song to black womanhood in modern Great Britain' Elle 'Exceptional. Ambitious, flowing and all-encompassing, an offbeat narrative that'll leave your mind in an invigorated whirl... [It] unites poetry, social history, women's voices and beyond. You have to order it right now' Stylist'Bernardine Evaristo can take any story from any time and turn it into something vibrating with life' Ali Smith, author of How to be both'Sparkling, inventive' Sunday Times'Funny, sad, tender and true, deserves to win awards' Red'Brims with vitality' Financial TimesSHORTLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE 2019
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
Girl, Woman, Other came highly recommended to me by my cousin who always has the best recommendations. The book follows the lives of 12 people in Britain, spanning various generations and backgrounds. Can’t wait to dive in.
Books from Natalie Portman

Judas

The Israeli master’s exceptional final novelSHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE 2017 Shmuel – a young, idealistic student – has abandoned his studies in Jerusalem, taking a live-in job as a companion to a cantankerous old man. But Shmuel quickly becomes obsessed with the taciturn Atalia, a woman of enchanting beauty, who also lives in the house. As the household’s tangled, tragic past becomes apparent, so too does story behind the birth of the state of Israel. Journeying back into the deep past, Judas is a love story like no other by a master storyteller at the height of his powers.‘A hero of mine, a moral as well as literary giant’ Simon Schama‘One of his boldest works of all’ Boyd Tonkin, Financial Times‘Amos Oz...brought so much beauty, so much love, and a vision of peace to our lives. Please hold him in your hearts and read his books’ Natalie PortmanJudas is the first novel selected for the Amos Oz reading circle established by Natalie Portman.
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
It’s been a tough entry into the new year with the loss of the great Amos Oz, whom I love dearly. But in his honor, I’m starting a reading circle, beginning with the last novel he published: JUDAS. Please let me know what you think. #amosoz #judas
Books from Natalie Portman

kaddish.com

When his father dies, it falls to Larry—the secular son in a family of Orthodox Brooklyn Jews—to recite the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, every day for eleven months. But to the horror and dismay of his sister, Larry refuses, imperiling the fate of his father’s soul. To appease her, he hires a stranger through a website called kaddish.com to say the prayer instead—a decision that will have profound, and very personal, repercussions. Irreverent, hilarious, and wholly irresistible, Nathan Englander’s tale of a son who makes a diabolical compromise brilliantly captures the tensions between tradition and modernity.
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
So excited to read the new novel #kaddish.com by my friend @nenglander
Books from Natalie Portman

Becoming Ms. Burton

Winner of the 2018 National Council on Crime & Delinquency’s Media for a Just Society AwardsWinner of the 2017 Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice“Valuable . . . [like Michelle] Alexander’s The New Jim Crow.”—Los Angeles Review of Books“Susan Burton is a national treasure . . . her life story is testimony to the human capacity for resilience and recovery . . . [Becoming Ms. Burton is] a stunning memoir.”—Nicholas Kristof, in The New York Times Winner of the prestigious NAACP Image Award, a uniquely American story of trauma, incarceration, and “the breathtaking resilience of the human spirit” (Michelle Alexander)Widely hailed as a stunning memoir, Becoming Ms. Burton is the remarkable life story of the renowned activist Susan Burton. In this “stirring and moving tour-de-force” (John Legend), Susan Burton movingly recounts her own journey through the criminal justice system and her transformation into a life of advocacy. After a childhood of immense pain, poverty, and abuse in Los Angeles, the tragic loss of her son led her into addiction, which in turn led to arrests and incarceration. During the War on Drugs, Burton was arrested and would cycle in and out of prison for more than fifteen years. When, by chance, she finally received treatment, her political awakening began and she became a powerful advocate for “a more humane justice system guided by compassion and dignity” (Booklist, starred review). Her award-winning organization, A New Way of Life, has transformed the lives of more than one thousand formerly incarcerated women and is an international model for a less punitive and more effective approach to rehabilitation and reentry. Winner of an NAACP Image Award and named a “Best Book of 2017” by the Chicago Public Library, here is an unforgettable book about “the breathtaking resilience of the human spirit” (Michelle Alexander).
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
This month I hope you join me in reading Susan Burton’s incredible memoir, Becoming Ms. Burton, about her journey to helping women re-integrate into life after imprisonment. Today, I visited incarcerated women with Ms. Burton at Lynwood Jail in LA. It was shattering to face mass incarceration in my own neighborhood- including pregnant and mentally ill inmates in shackles. There are some true angels among us, though, that bring light amid all the injustice, and Susan Burton is a rare human who is doing just that with @anewwayoflifela . Thank you for the spark of hope in the darkness.
Books from Natalie Portman

Hope in the Dark

“[A] landmark book . . . Solnit illustrates how the uprisings that begin on the streets can upend the status quo and topple authoritarian regimes” (Vice). A book as powerful and influential as Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me, her Hope in the Dark was written to counter the despair of activists at a moment when they were focused on their losses and had turned their back to the victories behind them—and the unimaginable changes soon to come. In it, she makes a radical case for hope as a commitment to act in a world whose future remains uncertain and unknowable. Drawing on her decades of activism and a wide reading of environmental, cultural, and political history, Solnit argues that radicals have a long, neglected history of transformative victories, that the positive consequences of our acts are not always immediately seen, directly knowable, or even measurable, and that pessimism and despair rest on an unwarranted confidence about what is going to happen next. Now, with a moving new introduction explaining how the book came about and a new afterword that helps teach us how to hope and act in our unnerving world, she brings a new illumination to the darkness of our times in an unforgettable new edition of this classic book. “One of the best books of the 21st century.” —The Guardian “No writer has better understood the mix of fear and possibility, peril and exuberance that’s marked this new millennium.” —Bill McKibben, New York Times–bestselling author of Falter “An elegant reminder that activist victories are easily forgotten, and that they often come in extremely unexpected, roundabout ways.” —The New Yorker
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
#HopeInTheDark #RebeccaSolnit
Books from Natalie Portman

The Waves

'I, who would wish to feel close over me the protective waves of the ordinary, catch with the tail of my eye some far horizon.'Intensely visionary yet absorbed with the everyday; experimental, daring and challenging, The Waves is regarded by many as Virginia Woolf's greatest achievement. It follows a set of six friends from childhood to middle age as they experience the world around them and explore who they are and what itmeans to be alive. As the contours of their lives are revealed, a unique novel is slowly unveiled. Enfolded within Woolf's lyrical and mysterious language, the mundane takes on a startling new significance while distant pasts are no less in play than the clamorous sounds and kaleidoscopic sights ofthe modern city. Yet precisely where the alluringly enigmatic pages of The Waves are leading, and what deeper meanings are held within its undulant chapters and shimmering interludes, are questions that have never ceased to enthral readers and critics alike.In this new edition David Bradshaw considers the spellbinding oddness and originality of The Waves, helping the reader to negotiate a way though this most poetic and haunting of novels.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expertintroductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
Natalie Portman
Actress, Director
#TheWaves by #virginiawoolf