Key Highlights:
- Penn Badgley’s Formative Reads: The You star reveals the six books that profoundly shaped his life, from childhood horror to essential works on race and spirituality.
- A Shift from Fiction: Badgley explains why a powerful non-fiction book turned him off most fiction for nearly two decades, seeking stories that “hit as hard as nonfiction does.”
- Spiritual and Political Awakening: The actor details how his reading journey was integral to his political disillusionment and eventual conversion to the Baha’i faith.
- New Book “Crushmore”: This insight into his literary influences comes as Badgley celebrates the release of his new book of essays, Crushmore: Essays on Love, Loss, and Coming-of-Age.
Penn Badgley: Beyond the Bookshelf of Joe Goldberg
While he’s famous for playing the dangerously well-read Joe Goldberg in Netflix’s You, Penn Badgley’s own literary journey has shaped him in profoundly different ways. The actor, podcaster, and now co-author of a new book of essays titled Crushmore, recently shared the six books that changed his life, offering a rare glimpse into the intellectual and spiritual development behind the celebrity persona.
“Reading has always been the way that I learned the most,” Badgley stated, explaining that books were central to his unconventional, homeschooled upbringing. His selections reveal a path from childhood wonder and dread to a deep, spiritual, and political awakening.
From Childhood Dread to Intellectual Humor
Badgley’s formative literary experiences began with a memorable introduction to complex emotions. He credits Clive Barker’s ** Thief of Always ** with introducing him not just to mystery and awe, but also to “existential dread.” He recalls being “blown away” by the book’s intensity as a young boy.
On a lighter but equally brilliant note, Badgley points to Bill Watterson’s ** Calvin and Hobbes ** as his “first formative literary experience” with sophisticated humor. Revisiting the comic strip as a father, he praised its wise, clever, and reverent depiction of the natural world and the hidden loneliness of childhood.
A Political and Spiritual Awakening
A significant turning point came during his Gossip Girl years. Reading Adam Hochschild’s ** Leopold’s Ghost **, a harrowing account of the slave trade in the Congo, shattered his interest in fiction. “After this book, no fiction could hit hard enough,” he explained. The book ignited a period of political disillusionment that evolved into a moral and spiritual search.
This search ultimately led him to the Baha’i faith, a journey profoundly influenced by ** The Hidden Words ** by Bahá’u’lláh. Badgley describes the text as a distillation of “the essence of true religion,” and reading it daily for months was a key factor in his decision to become a Baha’i.
Confronting Hard Truths Through Literature
Badgley also highlighted two authors who helped him grasp complex social realities. James Baldwin’s ** The Fire Next Time ** was crucial in helping him feel and understand that race is a social construct. “He was so humane,” Badgley said of Baldwin, calling him a “completely unique, rarefied, and special” writer.
The only work of fiction to break through his two-decade hiatus was Octavia E. Butler’s ** Parable of the Sower **. He praised the post-apocalyptic novel for its world-building “grounded in truth,” a quality he attributes to Butler’s genius as a Black woman. He found its message of “radical hope” in a disintegrating world to be a powerful counterpoint to the cynicism often found in the genre.
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