Required reading: six books that changed Penn Badgley’s life

Joe Goldberg, Penn Badgley’s character in the Netflix thriller series Youis a bit of a bibliophile – and Badgley is also quite educated. Unlike Goldberg, however, he does not use literature to help him rationalize the murder. Instead, books helped Badgley make sense of the world and its inhabitants, especially while he was homeschooled as an aspiring artist. It is a period of his life that he revisits in Crushmore: Essays on Love, Loss, and Coming of Agea witty and engaging new book that Badgley wrote with Sophie Ansari and Nava Kavelin, the co-hosts of his podcast Podécrassé.

“Reading has always been the way I’ve learned the most,” Badgley says over Zoom. The 38-year-old actor has a baby strapped to his chest, which he cradles while describing his unconventional upbringing, a far cry from the fictional world he once lived in. Gossip Girlplaying a Brooklynite from an elite high school.

To celebrate CrushmoreComing out of, Badgley here shares six books that changed his life and helped shape him as a writer.

Thief of forever by Clive Barker

I definitely read this book when I was nine or ten. He is the only one in a lifetime of literary experiences. I don’t know what I had read and liked before this book, but my memory is that it introduced me to the mystery. It introduced me to wonder and wonder, and it must have introduced me to horror, because it’s kind of a horror genre book for kids, even if that’s not what I remember. My memory is only of the strangeness, the intensity. I was blown away.

It’s funny, because I also remember maybe a feeling of dread, which is not what I like when I read or watch something. I’m definitely not a person who likes the suspense of horror. However, it seems to have had a very formative effect. You know, it’s a credit to the book, and it may not seem entirely positive: I think it may have introduced me to existential fear. I’m not kidding. And that’s kind of what horror does, right? And this book does it masterfully.

Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson

Last night my five year old collected the entire collection of Calvin and Hobbes that I’d had around for about 15 years, and he wanted me to read it to him around 4:30 in the morning. Her nights right now are so crazy because of the twins. Anyway, I was reading it this morning, and not for nothing, I said to myself: “This is actually my first formative literary experience. It’s great. Calvin and Hobbes This is definitely my first experience with literary humor, because that’s what it’s about. It’s very wise, it’s very intelligent. It’s subtle.