Actor Chris Pine’s favorite recent reads
Chris Pine is much loved for his role as James T. Kirk in the popular Star Trek films, Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, and early on as Nicholas Devereaux in The Princess Diaries films. Speaking of which, the question everyone’s asking right now is if he’ll be starring in the just announced film, The Princess Diaries 3 (as of this writing, we don’t have the answer but hope it’s yes!).
This year, Pine turned his focus to a different art form: writing a children’s book. When Digz the Dog Met Zurl the Squirrel: A Short Tale About a Short Tail is a delightful picture book about unexpected friendships and love that is perfect for reading aloud. What books has Chris Pine been reading lately? Here’s a look at four, and what he loves about them.
A heartening and heartfelt and beautiful reminder of the importance in staying true in your art. I find it quite moving that Rilke spends such great effort, and such thoughtfulness, mentoring the young military cadet dreaming of being a writer like his hero. And, of course, the simple and profound truth in the letters that, to borrow from another of my favorite pieces of writing, the life worth living is not that of “the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. But the man in the arena.” Or, put another way as a great writer told me recently: the job of the artist is to have the bravery to step to the cliff’s edge and peer into the abyss beyond and tell us what they see. —Chris Pine
A masterclass in writing and storytelling by one of our greats, which makes me immediately want to sign up for his graduate seminar at Syracuse from which this book is derived. Admittedly, I haven’t made my way through it entirely, not yet. The shiny nugget I carry with me at the moment is this idea that if you can think of a character doing something, have the character do it. Don’t wait. Keep digging and don’t be stingy. —Chris Pine
Romance and intrigue and the power of wonder. I love this one for many reasons, one of which is it centers on a mysterious and labyrinthine place called the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. This is one of those great books where, when you read it, you forget about everything and simply disappear inside an entirely different world. The kind of book you are missing when you're not lost in it. —Chris Pine
I love spy fiction. It may be my desert island genre. And no one does it better than this man. In a way, it’s a love story of a man and the ghost of his ex-wife; a man who lives with, and in, the memories he has of his dead wife. Le Carre’s sentences are beautiful. His plotting is incredible. But it’s really in the characterizations of his stories’ inhabitants where he is just so, so good. —Chris Pine
Author photo credit: Patrick J. Adams
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