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Rose Byrne's Desert Island Books: PRH Publishes 6 of Her 10 Picks

Actress Rose Byrne, most recently starring in the film adaptation of Nick Hornby’s JULIET, NAKED (Riverhead), was asked by bookseller One Grand Books to name 10 titles she would take to a desert island. Among her picks were 6 books published by Penguin Random House imprints. See these titles below, with personal thoughts about each one by Ms. Byrne:

• DINNER AT THE HOMESICK RESTAURANT by Anne Tyler (Vintage)
  “The masterful Anne Tyler again steals away with the most incredible story of a family unraveling and unfolding with the truths of resentments, failures, jealousy, and beauty. Such a thing to behold is Anne Tyler at work. Haunting.”
• THE FATAL SHORE by Robert Hughes (Vintage)
  “The founding of colonial Australia was finally laid bare to me in this dissertation on the bizarre experiment that would become the beginning of modern white Australia. With its brutality and the endlessly shocking facts, it is a truth stranger than any fiction.”
• THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS by Rebecca Skloot (Crown/Broadway)
  “The rarest of books about the experience of a science writer uncovering and investigating a cell line that changed the world, all while being thrown into a transformative journey of discovering race and racism in America, the culture of African-Americans in the USA, and the painful reality of loss and family. A truly remarkable read — and I failed at science. Fascinating and phenomenal, heartbreaking and utterly compelling.”
• ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT’S ME, MARGARET by Judy Blume (Delacorte Books for Young Readers)
  “Touching the raw, weird, and often lonely and terrifying experience of being a teenage girl like no other book I have stumbled across. Quintessential Judy Blume. Magical, moving, and iconic.”
• THE AWAKENING AND SELECTED STORIES by Kate Chopin (Signet)
  “A landmark work of feminism, which was censored at the time of its release. But more so, it is beautifully written, with an iridescent shimmer — a moving and devastating spiritual tragedy.”
• WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT LOVE by Raymond Carver (Vintage) “I always return to Raymond Carver, his dirty realism, his sparse writing and his ambiguity is a joy to read, to drift away with, finding the dark corners and weird places.”

View all 10 of Rose Byrne’s Desert Island Reads here.