Jamie Lee Curtis’ favourite book of all time: “As great a book as you will ever read”
‘Scream Queen’ Jamie Lee Curtis is one of the most famous final girls in history and is still serving us in some of the best roles to this day. Most recently, Curtis featured in modern classic Knives Out, and is currently filming a sequel of Freaky Friday with Lindsay Lohan, proving that her many talents have found many homes over the years.
We appreciate everything about Curtis, especially her frankness and intelligence, which make her the actor she is. Part of that is her constant learning. Curtis is known for being well-read and has revealed her top ten favourite books to One Grand Books.
In her list, Curtis reveals that Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner is her favourite book, saying: “If I had to pick one book, one example of what I love, it would be this book. I enrolled in a lecture series called How the West Was Written and started with Willa Cather and ended with Joan Didion. In the middle of the series we read Stegner. It is as great a book as you will ever read.”
Aside from loving the fact that Jamie Lee Curtis enrolled in a lecture series, her choice is also very characteristic of who we know Curtis to be: enlightening, introspective and extremely interesting. Plus, her mention of Cather and Didion adds another layer to what has informed her perspective, allowing us to understand this icon even further.
Wallace Stegner was an American historian, novelist, short story writer, and environmentalist, and his novel Angle of Repose was first published in 1971. It follows retired historian Lyman Ward, confined to a wheelchair, as he sets out to write his grandparents’ remarkable story, chronicling their days spent carving civilisation into the surface of America’s western frontier. But his research reveals even more about his own life than he’s willing to admit. What emerges is an enthralling portrait of four generations in the life of an American family.
Angle of Repose won the Pulitzer Prize, and given its chronicling of an American family and, by extension, America itself, it could be seen as the perfect thing to inform Curtis’ acting, which has mostly been amongst suburban American life. The star inhabits an American house and family in the likes of Knives Out, Freaky Friday, and of course, Halloween, so it’s easy to see how important a novel like this can actually be for an astounding career such as hers.
Curtis’ love of history and reading seemed to come from a family holiday in Sardinia when she was 12, as she says about Shōgun, another of her favourite books: “I found a copy of Clavell on the bookshelf in the home that we were renting and it saved me. Historical fiction became a lifelong love, and James Clavell a guide.” So it seems Curtis has Clavell to thank for eventually finding Wallace Stegner.
