Lana Condor | Shelf Portrait | Marie Claire
Lana Condor takes us on a tour of her bookshelf! She shares some of her favorite reads of all time, from the thrilling to the hilarious, and a few very special "To All The Boys" mementos.
Transcript
00:00If a pony only doing one trick has become synonymous with failure,
00:04perhaps we as a society have become too demanding of our ponies.
00:09Hello, Marie Claire.
00:10I am on a condor and I'm very excited to show you guys my little library.
00:21This is my little library.
00:22When I say little, it's little.
00:24But she's growing.
00:26She's becoming a woman.
00:28I recently moved to Seattle.
00:31I'm still kind of nesting, trying to figure out different furniture pieces,
00:35and also where to put them.
00:37This bookshelf is really special to me.
00:39I've had it in my family for as long as I can remember.
00:43And my parents actually gave it to me.
00:46These are my little guys.
00:49They bring me a lot of peace and joy.
00:51And this was my mom's childhood tea set that she had when she was a little girl.
00:56And so she also gave that to me as a housewarming gift, which was very kind of her.
01:01So these are a collection of books that I have.
01:05I have a couple more strewn around the house,
01:08or I give some to my mom because we share books and go back and forth.
01:12So some of them aren't here, but these are kind of like some of my favorites,
01:16so I want to show you some of them.
01:17My first ones I want to show you are my To All the Boys book set.
01:24This one is the To All the Boys P.S. I Still Love You movie tie-in,
01:29which is so cool. That's my face.
01:31This one is the To All the Boys I've Loved Before, the first movie tie-in book.
01:36And then this is the P.S. I Still Love You novel edition, I guess.
01:41And a movie tie-in for To All the Boys Always and Forever, Lara Jean.
01:47That is out. I just haven't gotten a copy yet, which is crazy.
01:50The majority of my books are thrillers.
01:53And when I say majority, I mean, like, honestly, all of them are thrillers.
01:57I'm a huge thriller fan. I love thrillers. I love everything about them.
02:01They make me so happy.
02:02So you're going to see quite a few thrillers in here.
02:05This is a great one. This is called Five Total Strangers.
02:09I'd love for this to be made into a movie, and I would love to be in it.
02:14It's incredible.
02:15It's a really great thriller about these five complete strangers
02:18stuck in a car together on a snowstorm.
02:20On a snowstorm. This is The Douche Journals by Schmidt.
02:24A definitive account of one man's genius, Schmidt.
02:28Madeline Arthur, one of my best friends, she got it for me for my birthday.
02:33And it has all these great quotes from Schmidt.
02:36I'm donating my kidneys to science and my heart to fashion.
02:39This is a great little book that I oftentimes will keep in my purse when I'm traveling.
02:44It's called How to Love, and it reminds me, basically, to love.
02:49Often our pride stands in the way of our asking for help.
02:52In true love, there is no place for pride.
02:55To love each other means to trust each other.
02:57If you don't tell the person you love of your suffering,
03:01it means you don't love this person enough to trust.
03:04You have to realize that this person is the best person to help you.
03:08We need to be able to get help from the person we love.
03:11I am a big fan of Harlan Coben.
03:18He is a great kind of thriller, action writer.
03:22And my dad introduced me to him for my birthday.
03:27He got me this, Harlan Coben's The Boy from the Woods,
03:31which I believe recently came out, and it's divine.
03:34And then immediately after I finished this, I was like, Dad, this is so good.
03:38So I ran to the bookstore and got Harlan Coben's Promise Me.
03:42If you want to do like a father-daughter read, Harlan Coben.
03:45It hits deep with the father-daughters.
03:47We have like your classic A.J. Finn's, which I love.
03:50Oh, I just finished this thriller. It's awesome.
03:54It's called In Case of Emergencies by E.G. Scott.
03:58And this is so good. This is so, so good.
04:03It's about deception and, you know, doubting your reality and murder
04:09and the decay of the human brain.
04:13So if that's your thing, this is a great one.
04:16Definitely a page-tuner. Loved it a lot. It's so good.
04:19I love Anthony Horowitz. He's the author.
04:22This is called The Moonflower Murders.
04:24It's delicious. Delicious.
04:27It looks daunting, but it's a very easy read,
04:31and you just like eat it up like a snack.
04:34It's so good. And it's, I love kind of like period piece, like whodunnits.
04:41If you are a detective or you fancy yourself to have detective skills,
04:46this is the one.
04:48This is No Exit by Taylor Adams.
04:50I want to make a movie out of it so bad.
04:52It says a full-throttle thriller. Swift, sharp, and relentless.
04:57And that is the review by A.J. Finn, who I love.
05:00She did The Woman in the Window, so as soon as I saw that,
05:03I was like, I trust A.J. Let's read this book.
05:06And I was not disappointed.
05:09Calm the f**k down.
05:12It is how to control what you can and accept what you can't
05:15so you can stop freaking out and get on with your life.
05:18This is a great book.
05:20She has a bunch of really awesome books.
05:22And this is my bookmark. This is for Anthony and I.
05:27And it basically tells you how to calm the f**k down,
05:30which I need. I need desperately.
05:34We have these incredible books that are amazing.
05:40White Fragility,
05:43Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria,
05:46and Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race.
05:50These are books that have taught me a lot
05:55and shared a lot of incredible perspective.
05:58And I've learned quite a bit from these books.
06:01And they were recommended to me on pretty much all the reading lists
06:06that we were given during the Black Lives Matter movements earlier this year.
06:13So these are incredible reads. I highly, highly recommend.
06:17This, Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race,
06:21is a really, really great one if you are just starting out.
06:25Like, okay, I want to learn and I want to be better.
06:29I want a piece of literature that can help me.
06:31It's educational, fun to read, well-researched,
06:35but doesn't feel, like, wildly daunting.
06:39This is a great one to start with.
06:41One of my favorite books, The Murder of Harriet Monkton.
06:44It's a whodunit, but in, like, old Victorian times.
06:50It's shocking to read because it's shocking to see
06:53the way that females were treated
06:57back then, which was horribly.
07:01So this one's a good one to read to see how far we've come.
07:06I, of course, have The Rise of Kiyoshi.
07:11I love Kiyoshi. I love her.
07:14So I have, like, all my collections of the Deadly Class graphic novels.
07:18I also have one in the big book.
07:21This is a television show that I did a couple years back
07:25based off of the graphic novels.
07:27The illustrations are incredible.
07:29I highly suggest if you like really, really dark, dark graphic novels,
07:33this one is the one for you.
07:35And I guess the last one that I'll show you,
07:37which isn't really a book, but it's a scrapbook,
07:40is my makeup artist on To All the Boys PS I Still Love You
07:45made a scrapbook for me as my wrap gift.
07:48And it's really, like, it's kind of my prized possession.
07:52There's a lot of, like, behind-the-scenes pictures,
07:55cast and crew writing notes,
07:57me and my makeup artist sleeping wherever we could.
08:02Oh, this is a big letter the crew wrote and signed.
08:08This is Noah. He wrote me a letter.
08:12It's very special.
08:13So this is definitely, like, one of my most prized possessions
08:18is my To All the Boys PS I Still Love You scrapbook.
08:22I'll share one more.
08:24This is The Good Mood Diet, and this was written by my father, Bob Condor.
08:30He wrote this book a while back, and it's called The Good Mood Diet.
08:33It's about a diet that helps you have a good mood,
08:37and it's not about taking things away,
08:39but adding things like joy to my amazing darling daughter
08:43who always puts me in a good mood.
08:46I love you fiercely, Daddy.
08:49So these are just a couple of my absolute favorites
08:54in my little tiny library.
08:56I just love collecting books.
08:58I'm going to find my Ruth Ware series from my mother and be like,
09:02Mom, these are my friends.
09:05Thank you so much Marie Claire, and until next time,
09:09happy reading!
09:11The Good Mood Diet