This is everything on Anne Hathaway’s current reading list
If you’re anything like us, we love receiving book recommendations. Our current reading list is so long that it might take us half a century to get through it, and one of our favorite women just added on. We’re referring to goddess and actress Anne Hathaway, who just shared the books on her current reading list.
Hathaway posted a short Instagram flip-through of a few books she’s been working through. Not only does Hathaway have great taste in fashion, film roles, and well, everything, but her taste in literature is just as astounding.
Here are the goodies Hathaway has treated us with, and we’re chomping at the bit to dive in.
>Susan Sontag: The Complete Rolling Stone Interview — Jonathan Cott
Founding contributing editor to Rolling Stone, Jonathan Cott, interviewed political activist and creative intellectual, Susan Sontag, twice in 1978. Out of the combined 12-hour conversation Cott and Sontag shared, less than half of it was printed. Now, thanks to Yale University Press, the entire transcript has been published in book format.
Sontag has been considered to be one of the most influential critics of her time. She wrote and talked extensively about her thoughts and beliefs regarding human rights, communism, media, mental health, art and culture. This interview fully shows who Sontag was and what she stood for.
The Handmaid’s Tale — Margaret Atwood
Set in a dystopian, futuristic New England, The Handmaid’s Tale explores a woman’s role in a new totalitarian theocracy known as the Republic of Gilead. After the United States government is overthrown by this new regime, society reverts back to Puritanic times and those in charge interpret the Book of Genesis literally and rigidly apply it’s teachings to the new order.
Atwood’s novel won several awards in the years after it’s release. The Handmaiden’s Tale is satire, but also issues a warning as to how society can revert back to darker times which were thought to be in the past. It’s an interesting and a potentially scary read amidst our current political climate. The novel has been adapted for several different medias and will make its debut as a Hulu series, starring Elisabeth Moss, at the end of April.
1984 — George Orwell
If you somehow missed out on reading 1984 in high school, then it’s high time you read it now. Like Atwood’s The Handmaiden’s Tale, 1984 explores yet another futuristic, totalitarian society in which Big Brother is always watching your every move and the Thought Police censor your mind. The novel follows Winston Smith, a revolutionary who is trying to take down the regime alongside The Brotherhood and his lover, Julia.
Although the novel was written in the 1940s, Orwell’s 1984 still terrifies readers with its relevancy to modern politics and technological inventions. Orwell demands that readers not be complacent and to always seek truth. 1984 was and is so influential that many of the terms Orwell created to fit in his dystopia, are used commonly today.
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis — J.D. Vance
Having been born into the poor working-class white society of the forgotten south, Vance offers insight into the declining population of poverty-stricken Americans who never, and still don’t, have the chance to fight their way out of the lower class.
As one of the few kids who did make it out of poverty thanks to his grandparents, Vance, a Yale Law School graduate, reflects on how his family is still haunted by the abuse, alcoholism, and poverty they left behind in Kentucky Appalachia, even though they made it to the middle-class. With heart and insider knowledge, Vance candidly talks about the area of America that many Americans don’t realize is in crisis.
We’re sensing an important theme here, Anne Hathaway. It’s time to educate ourselves on what happened in history, what’s happening now, and what could happen in the future if we stay inactive. These books will open your eyes and leave you feeling empowered to go out there and change the world.
