Most of us would be wise to take any celebrity advice with a grain of salt. But Taylor Swift's influence is the exception. The superstar singer-songwriter has put everything from cocktails to cakes on the map. And, seeing as how she has a downright iconic way with words and stories, we can only imagine what kind of literary gems she's got on her bookshelf.
But despite what Kris Jenner might think, we can't just call Taylor up to get her favorite reads—and we don't have to. There's a website dedicated to collecting every book that famous singers, authors, actors, and the like have recommended in the press. It's called Ultimate Book List, and, luckily for Swiftie bookworms, Miss Taylor Alison Swift has been very open on the internet about what titles she currently has her nose in.
"(Without books) You can let little things pass you by, little details," she once told a group of elementary school students at a Scholastic Inc., event. "Like, say you're driving down the road and there's just this really beautiful autumn tree and it has these gorgeous orange leaves. You might just let that pass you by if you have never read books that describe how beautiful they are, from somebody else's perspective."
Swift told the kids that she has always been a reader and, back in the day, loved classic tales from the "Sesame Street" books and anything from Dr. Suess. But her horizons have since broadened to include a number of genres and authors that all have that quintessential Taylor Swift flair.
So, without further ado, here are 13 books that Taylor Swift personally recommends you read.
'To Kill a Mockingbird' by Harper Lee
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On multiple occasions, Swift has said that reading Harper Lee's iconic book changed the way she viewed the world. The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, set in the American South, is about a local lawyer who defends a black man falsely accused of a horrific crime—and it's all told through the eyes of his young daughter, Scout.
"You know, you hear storytelling like in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and it just... it makes your mind wander," she reportedly one time told Big Machine Label Group. "It makes you feel like it makes your world more vast. And you think about more things and greater concepts after you read something like that."
'Conversations with Friends' by Sally Rooney
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The "Love Story" singer listed Irish author Sally Rooney as one of her current influences in her 2019 cover story for Entertainment Weekly — and gave a nod to her popular 2017 novel "Conversations with Friends." The book follows two best friends who are swept up by a married couple's world of art and affairs.
"I like the tone she takes when she's writing," Swift said. "I think it's like being in somebody's mind."
'Normal People' by Sally Rooney
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This rec is more hearsay. A fan account on Twitter posted that Swift mentioned loving the New York Times bestseller "Normal People" during an L.A. secret session in 2019. But seeing as how she's publicly declared her love for Rooney's work, it's not totally out of the realm of possibility.
The novel focuses on the seemingly destined, ever-evolving relationship between two high school classmates in Ireland. One is a popular athlete, the other an introverted intellect — and both are struggling to find their place in the world.
'The Fault in Our Stars' by John Green
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Author John Green is a big fan of Swift, and apparently, the feeling is mutual. The writer and the singer have been friends since 2014, and she referenced his bestselling romance book about a teen with terminal cancer as the inspiration behind one of her lyrics.
"There is a line in 'Clean', the last song on 1989: 'When I was drowning, that's when I could finally breathe,'" Swift said in a 2015 interview with ASOS Magazine. "It talks about the loss of a relationship, but it could be about addiction, depression or the loss of someone. There's this quote in [the book] 'The Fault in Our Stars', 'Pain demands to be felt.' No matter how many times society tells you to put on a smiling face, pain is going to be felt one way or another, today or a year from now."
'The Great Gatsby' by F. Scott Fitzgerald
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Now, Swift hasn't come out and admitted that she's a huge fan of F. Scott Fitzgerald's cornerstone novel about love and obsession in the Roaring Twenties. But it's safe to say that the book has had a huge influence on her music. Not only did she name-drop Gatsby in "This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things" on the album "Reputation," but she also embodied the book's themes in her music video for "Delicate."
'Charlotte's Web' by E. B. White
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That Scholastic Books event we mentioned earlier? During that talk, she mentioned that E. B. White's classic story about a pig named Wilbur and his friend, a spider named Charlotte, is one of her all-time favorite books.
'Stargirl' by Jerry Spinelli
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In 2015, Swift sat down with another group of kids to talk about the importance of reading. She told them that she was inspired by a lot of female characters in the books she read growing up — one of them being Stargirl, the lead in Jerry Spinelli's bestselling YA novel.
"]It's] about a girl who's very different than everybody else in her school," she said. "Some people call her weird, but no matter how much they make fun of her, she just continues to be herself. And pretty soon, that individuality rubs off on everyone else, and they want to be just like her."
'Committed' by Elizabeth Gilbert
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During that same Scholastic Book event, Swift mentioned that she's also a big fan of author Elizabeth Gilbert's work, especially her book "Committed." That novel is a follow-up to the bestselling memoir "Eat, Pray, Love" and dives into the often-misunderstood institution of marriage.
"Listening to her talk at seminars, especially one that I YouTubed, where she was talking about trying to create her followup project, it made me cry," the singer said. "It was so inspirational."
'Eat, Pray, Love' by Elizabeth Gilbert
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In addition to "Committed," Swift also said at the Scholastic event that she loved Gilbert's bestselling memoir "Eat, Pray, Love," which explores the author's journey of self-discovery and healing after a difficult divorce.
'Rebecca' by Daphne du Maurier
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In a 2020 interview with Apple Music, Swift revealed that the inspiration behind the song "Tolerate It" from the album "evermore" was inspired by the 1938 gothic novel "Rebecca" by Daphne du Maurier. The story is about a woman who marries a wealthy widower only to be haunted by his late first wife, Rebecca.
"When I was reading 'Rebecca' by Daphne du Maurier, I was thinking, wow, her husband just tolerates her," the singer said. "She's doing all these things, and she's trying so hard, and she's trying to impress him, and he's just tolerating her the whole time.
"There was a part of me that was relating to that because, at some point in my life, I felt that way, so I ended up writing this song, 'Tolerate It,' which is all about trying to love someone who is ambivalent."
'The Beautiful and Damned' by F. Scott Fitzgerald
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Outside of nods in her songs, Swift has mentioned Fitzgerald's work a few times throughout her career, specifically in her 2019 essay on songwriting for Elle. She doesn't mention his book about a failing marriage between a wealthy socialite and a dancer specifically but references his works in general.
"The writing I love the most places you into that story, that room, that rain-soaked kiss," she wrote. "You can smell the air, hear the sounds, and feel your heart race as the character's does. It's something F. Scott Fitzgerald did so well, to describe a scene so gorgeously interwoven with rich emotional revelations, that you yourself have escaped from your own life for a moment."
'Wonderful Tonight' by Pattie Boyd
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In 2018, Swift interviewed the legendary 1960s muse for Harper's Bazaar and mentioned how she "devoured" Boyd's 2008 memoir "Wonderful Tonight: George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Me." The book details Boyd's marriages to both musicians and how she influenced some of their biggest hits.
'The Kennedy Women' by Laurence Leamer
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Long before she briefly dated Conor Kennedy in 2019, Swift was getting to know the history of his famous family. She told The New York Times in 2011 that she had just finished reading Laurence Leamer's 900-page deep dive into the lives of the Kennedy women.
"I'm just so obsessed with the whole history of J.F.K. and R.F.K.," she said. There's no doubt that her fascination with the family inspired a least one song of Swifts: "Starlight" from the album "Red."
