Chris Pine names his favourite books of all time
Like many actors before him, Chris Pine has become very familiar with the live-action literary adaptation, although his recent move into producing and directing has yet to coincide with the star bringing one of his personal favourites to the screen.
One thing that his own book-to-movie choices have made clear is that he’s keen on variety, with animated fantasy Rise of the Guardians sitting alongside espionage thriller Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, post-apocalyptic sci-fi Z for Zachariah, true-life thriller The Finest Hours, otherworldly adventure A Wrinkle in Time, and understated spy story All the Old Knives all being derived from bestselling books.
His own tastes are nothing if not suitably eclectic, though, after Pine outlined his own reading list in an interview with Radical Reads. There are a couple of classics and well-known titles peppered throughout, but it offers a fascinating insight into how the Star Trek franchise’s Captain Kirk spends his downtime.
Describing Kaoru Takemura as “the grand dame of Japanese fiction”, Pine placed Lady Joker, volume two, among his favourites. Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights had Pine admitting he “found it pretty impenetrable until the end,” but he did get there in the end when it came to the “super mosaic-y” tome.
Karl Marlantes’ Matterhorn and What It Is Like to Go to War captured his attention for very different reasons, with the former focusing on “the drudgery and impersonalisation of war,” while the latter will quite simply “blow your fucking mind.”
Tove Ditlevsen’s Copenhagen trilogy wins points with Pine for being “unrelentingly dark,” with Michael Herr’s Dispatches “a bit like Apocalypse Now” in his estimation, and his admiration for The Naked and the Dead emerged from the actor having “just went through a huge Norman Mailer phase,” which is why the author’s The Executioner’s Song also makes the cut.
Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood spoke to Pine through the way it “humanizes these awful people in a way that’s difficult for your brain,” while the “really, really dense luminescent spiderweb” of Don DeLillo’s Underworld left such an impression that it opens with “maybe the best 40 pages I’ve ever read.”
Irène Némirovsky’s Master of Souls offers “a great parable about greed, the need for more,” although Pine plumped for A Tale of Two Cities despite professing himself to be a huge fan of Charles Dickens in general. Colm Toibin’s fictional accounts of Thomas Mann and Henry James in The Master and The Magician had Pine so hooked he “read these back-to-back,” with Philip Kerr’s Berlin Noir rounding out Pine’s contenders before he settled on the entire back catalogue of one author to single out.
The entirety of John le Carré’s bibliography is something Pine couldn’t bring himself to separate individually, although he does reserve special mentions for The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories From My Life, The Honourable Schoolboy, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and Smiley’s People.
Chris Pine’s favourite books:
- Lady Joker, Volume 2 (Kaoru Takemura, 2022)
- Flights (Olga Tokarczuk, 2007)
- Matterhorn (Karl Marlantes, 2009)
- What It Is Like to Go to War (Karl Marlantes, 2011)
- The Copenhagen Trilogy (Tove Ditlevsen, 1967-1971)
- Dispatches (Michael Herr, 1977)
- The Naked and the Dead (Norman Mailer, 1948)
- The Executioner’s Song (Norman Mailer, 1979)
- In Cold Blood (Truman Capote, 1965)
- Underworld (Don DeLillo, 1997)
- Master of Souls (Irène Némirovsky, 1939)
- The Master (Colm Toibin, 2004)
- The Magician (Colm Toibin, 2021)
- Berlin Noir (Philip Kerr, 1993)
- The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (John le Carré, 1963)
- The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories From My Life (John le Carré, 2016)
- The Honourable Schoolboy (John le Carré, 1977)
- Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (John le Carré, 1974)
- Smiley’s People (John le Carré, 1979)
