Marie Claire took a tour inside Madison Beer’s meaningful personal library. The singer’s book collection is filled with vintage classics, mental health reads, and now her own book: The Half of It.
Hear about all her favorite books and which popular series she's never read!
Hear about all her favorite books and which popular series she's never read!
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00:00Hi, I'm Madison Beer, and today I'm going to be taking Marie Claire into my library for Shelf Portrait.
00:09So the first book that I want to showcase is Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.
00:15I was very, very excited when I found this.
00:17I go to a lot of vintage shops and markets specifically looking for books,
00:21and collecting vintage books is only something that I've been doing for probably two years now,
00:25but it's become my favorite hobby.
00:27I walked over to this girl, Stan, who had so, so many, and I was like,
00:30do you have any really rare ones or anything that's really special?
00:32And she was like, oh, I mean, yeah, I have the rarest and one of the most special books.
00:36And when she pulled it out and showed me that it was Alice in Wonderland,
00:39I freaked out because I'm a huge Alice in Wonderland fan.
00:41I have a song called Fall the White Rabbit that is regarding Alice in Wonderland.
00:45One of my favorite things about this book is obviously the book itself,
00:48but I love when in vintage old books, it's someone personalized this to someone.
00:54It says, To Jack from Charles Dunn.
00:56And I think that's so cool that I now somehow have this book in my hands.
01:00And Charles Dunn, if you're watching this, I'm sorry I have your book.
01:04I feel like I have a piece of history in my hand and like the spine of the book is completely exposed.
01:09And I don't know, just everything about it is really cool.
01:11And I feel really honored when I hold something like this in my hands.
01:14So yeah, this is one of my favorite and most prized possession books.
01:18The second book that I want to show is The Body Keeps the Score.
01:21This is one of my all time favorite books.
01:23Specifically, I love reading mental health books.
01:25And this book really was the catalyst for like getting me into this mental health journey of healing
01:32and understanding my trauma and like working through it in a proper way.
01:35And I actually discovered and started reading this book when I was on a bit of a mental health retreat.
01:39It made me feel really seen.
01:41So yeah, I really, really love this one.
01:44It impacted me a lot.
01:45So to sort of say on the same vein of mental health books,
01:49this is another one that I really, really love and swear by.
01:51It's called Love Me, Don't Leave Me.
01:52And it's about overcoming fear of abandonment and building loving, lasting relationships.
01:56I was reading this at a time where I was really just trying to figure out
02:00how I can heal myself and better my life in ways that I felt like I was lacking.
02:05And this was something that I didn't even know that I needed, but I really, really needed.
02:09It just made me, again, feel really seen, understood.
02:12It made me understand how to navigate life and relationships, friendships, romantic ones,
02:17whatever it is, better.
02:18And yeah, how I can cope with my issues.
02:23The next book that I would like to talk about is The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein.
02:27I think this was probably arguably the first ever book that impacted me in my life.
02:33I was just touched by the whole story and I felt like it was really important to learn about giving
02:38and what that means in return.
02:40There were so many aspects and lessons that I feel like this book taught me super young.
02:43And I actually have a tattoo, which is a little boy on my foot.
02:46I think it teaches us important lessons that we should carry out through adulthood.
02:50So the next book I want to talk about that really touched me was Conflicts, PTSD, From Surviving to Thriving.
02:56This is something that definitely changed my life because I think that
02:59as someone who's struggled with mental health issues,
03:03I've never been someone who's wanted to say that I have PTSD
03:05because to me, that was always a term that was very serious.
03:08And I guess I guilt shamed and victim shamed myself into thinking that
03:12what I had gone through wasn't serious enough to be called PTSD.
03:15But this book is so affirming in the sense that like,
03:18even if you grew up in a household that you didn't feel seen as a child,
03:21and like that is traumatic and you can have PTSD from that,
03:24that lingers throughout your adult life.
03:26And this is just about recovering those things, work with your inner child.
03:30I remember picking up this book and I loved reading that because I was like,
03:34I definitely felt really hated for a lot of my childhood, specifically on the internet.
03:38And I feel like, again, I was sort of in this like victim shaming, like,
03:42oh, you aren't worthy of reading this book mentality.
03:44And I was like, no, this is serious.
03:46And I think I do struggle with PTSD in a lot of ways.
03:48So this book changed my life.
03:49And if any of those things relate to you, you should read it.
03:52It's really helpful.
03:53So the final book I want to talk about is my book, The Half of It.
03:56This comes out on April 25th, and I'm really, really excited about it.
03:59I'm really proud of it.
04:00I feel like all the books I had mentioned previously were actually
04:03the reason that I felt confident or capable enough to even write this in the first place,
04:07because I'm unsure of the place that I would be in without those.
04:10So I felt like writing something that hopefully could make other people feel that same way
04:13that I felt reading those books.
04:14And I feel like as human beings, it's only our jobs to learn from each other's experiences
04:19and hear each other out and have empathy for one another, lend out a hand of kindness.
04:24And that's really what I want with this book is for everyone to just realize
04:27that everyone has a story you just haven't read yet.
04:29It's really important to me. It's very special.
04:31I talk about a lot in this book that I've never talked about before.
04:34So go ahead and get your hands on it, April 25th, and I hope you guys love it.
04:38My favorite genre of books would have to either be poetry books or mental health books.
04:42The last time I stayed up all night to finish a book would have to have been mine,
04:46because I remember we were trying to reach a deadline and it wasn't finished yet.
04:49So I had to literally stay up all night and make sure it got done.
04:51I think that my fans would have to be the people who give me the best book recommendations.
04:55I feel like I can go online and I'll have a bunch of mentions just saying like,
04:58Hey, you should read this book. And they're always so spot on.
05:00Also at my concerts, a lot of my fans will bring me books in person for me to read.
05:04And it's so sweet. And I always read them.
05:07I think I like discussing books the most with my best friend, Lena.
05:10She has read most books.
05:14And so I like to talk to her in depth about the books that we've read together.
05:18I usually like to buy my books at vintage shops.
05:20There's actually one bookstore that if I can shout them out,
05:23David Kaye's books in like Woodland Hills,
05:25if you live in the LA area and you want to go to the Valley, it's an amazing bookstore.
05:29I would say 85% of these books are from him.
05:32He just has an incredible collection that I love shopping from, but mainly vintage stores.
05:36The process of writing my book was really therapeutic for me.
05:39It was very telling. I feel like I learned a lot about myself that I didn't even know.
05:43And it was really fun.
05:44I have journal prompts in the book because in a lot of the mental health books that I like to read,
05:50it would have sort of this call and response thing in it.
05:52And I felt like that was really helpful for me as a reader to stay immersed in the book and be attentive with it.
05:59So I wanted to do that.
06:00It was really fun to sort of figure out what prompt I wanted to write after every story that I told.
06:05So that was, that was a really fun part of it.
06:07A book that I've never read is Harry Potter.
06:10And I think people find that to be sinful.
06:13So yeah, sorry.
06:15My favorite place to read a book would definitely be in bed.
06:17I think it puts me to sleep nicely.
06:19I do sleep with the TV on.
06:20So if I'm trying to be good and not sleep with the TV on, I'll read a book.
06:23Okay guys, thank you so much for watching.
06:25I hope you enjoyed my video of Shelf Portrait.
06:27My book, The Half of It, is out everywhere on April 25th.
06:30And don't forget to subscribe to Marie Claire.