Books
One Nightstand With Chelsea Handler
The author and comedian shares her four favorite books and why she gravitates toward “meaty and juicy” reads.
In One Nightstand, celebrity readers and writers join us at the blond in 11 Howard to discuss four of their favorite books, allowing us to learn about their tastes and lives in the process.
When Chelsea Handler was eight years old and all her friends were reading Sweet Valley High, she was deep into the Russian classics. “My father forced me to read books when I was little because I was very loud and precocious, and he wanted me to be at home where I couldn’t get into trouble,” Handler tells me when we meet ahead of the release of her seventh essay collection, I’ll Have What She’s Having. “I read Anna Karenina by Tolstoy when I was eight. East of Eden by John Steinbeck; Moby-Dick. Then I had to give book reports in the kitchen.”
Though Handler jokes she’s still “loath to thank” her father, reading continues to be one of her favorite hobbies. “I don’t like soft stuff. I like to learn something after I read,” she says when we begin discussing her four favorite books from adulthood. “I don’t like fantasy. I like fiction if it’s meaty and juicy but I don’t want to hear about a girl falling in love with the guy. I don’t care about that stuff.”
One book that fits that her requirements? Letting Go by David Hawkins. “I think what Letting Go really does is teach you how to let go of the nonsense. The small stuff — hurt feelings, guilt, and shame,” she says of the self-help book. “All of those are things that we hold on to, especially as women.”
Then there’s the novel Circe by Madeline Miller: a reimagining of The Odyssey which explores female rage in ways meaty enough to win over Handler. “I’m not really into Greek mythology, but that book stood out to me so much. It’s about jealousy, and so many themes in life come down to these kind of basic human emotions,” she says. “It’s up to us to decide how we’re going to deal with them in a way where you’re harnessing that as a tool rather than letting it take you down.”
While another of her favorite novels, The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, does feature a love story, it’s one so tragic that Handler still hasn’t shaken it. “[The protagonist] Lily is so lost. And when I was writing my book, I wanted to inject confidence into all of the people that don’t have it naturally. I would have liked to inject that into Lily,” she says. “There’s no mirth [in the book]. It’s all quite dark, and I want people to know that there’s always hope in the dark.”
Her final pick, The Little Liar by Mitch Albom, centers on the Holocaust. However, Handler argues that it’s less painful than the subject matter makes it seem. “It depicts the Holocaust in this almost fable type of way. You’re reading [from the perspective of] a little boy, and Hitler isn’t Hitler. He’s like the big bad wolf,” she says. “It shows how you can tell someone a lie, then people start believing it, and the world can just become so different right before your eyes.”
Below, you’ll find our full conversation with Handler, in which she discusses her thoughts on chick lit, the Book of Mormon, and getting her period.
