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Welcome to Shelf Life, ELLE.com’s books column, in which authors share their most memorable reads. Whether you’re on the hunt for a book to console you, move you profoundly, or make you laugh, consider a recommendation from the writers in our series, who, like you (since you’re here), love books. Perhaps one of their favorite titles will become one of yours, too.
Keanu Reeves: actor, director, bass player (with band Dogstar, on tour this summer), poet (Ode to Happiness and Shadows), co-publisher (X Artists’ Books), and custom motorcycle company cofounder can now add a collaboration with science fiction/fantasy author China Mieville to his resume. Their new book, The Book of Elsewhere (Del Rey), will publish on 7/23. Inspired by his BRZRKR comic book/graphic novel series about immortality, it will be adapted for Netflix with Reeves starring. Among his more than 100 film and video credits, perhaps the best known are The Matrix, John Wick, and Bill & Ted franchises. His name means “cool breeze over the mountains” in Hawaiian.
The Beirut-born, Toronto-raised, L.A.-based Reeves once got a Sprite for Claudette Colbert on a movie set; is the first Shelf Lifer to inspire the name of a fungus-killing bacteria (keanumycin); tried to cover for an underage Martha Plimpton caught drinking by a cop; appeared in Paula Abdul’s “Rush, Rush” video; and did an AMA. His excellent book recs below.
Hi, this is my literary riff to the suggestion prompts from Elle and Shelf Life. Reading stories and storytelling have been so impactful to my life, and one of my great joys in being alive. Here are a few examples of the journey I have been on so far…
Cheers, and happy reading..
Keanu
The book that…
surprised me and that I recommend over and over again:
The Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq, translated by Frank Wynne. Wow…. I don’t want to influence a read with a comment.. But… we are frail sometimes… and we all want and need love… I had never experienced a novel like this… it was often shocking to me in such a great way… and ultimately very moving and surprising… wonderfully written in my estimation.
made me laugh out loud:
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick. …and then some… this novel was revelatory for me… a kind of glee at experiencing the worlds and perspectives the author unfolded before my very eyes… I have not “seen” the same since..
kept me up way too late:
Three Moments of an Explosion: Stories by China Miéville. …so inventive, creative, extraordinary humanity and other… remarkable…
I brought on a momentous trip:
In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust (General Editor: Christopher Prendergast – Viking/Penguin Classics). …so enjoyed reading over a couple of years…starting with Lydia Davis’s translation of Vol 1… the novels were my companions over many days and travels… which turned out to be so fitting… and so worthwhile.. elegance in longing…and the beauty of place names… being…
broke my heart:
Novel with Cocaine by M. Ageyev (pseudonym), translated by Michael Henry Heiml. …perhaps not break, but somehow a kind of heartache of the loss of innocence… youth… hope?……
I swear I’ll finish one day:
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, translated by Edith Grossman…I really must…
shaped my world view:
Animal Farm and 1984 by George Orwell. …as a young person, super grateful for these two profound works to give me a what’s up and watch out peer and context into the world in front of me…
has the best opening line:
The Stranger by Albert Camus, translated by Mathew Ward: “Maman died today. Or maybe it was yesterday, I don’t know.”
“Aujord’hui Maman est morte. Ou peut-etre hier, je ne sais pas.”
…a short most emotionally intriguing introduction if there ever was one…
helped me through a loss:
Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell…being and connection with nature.. certain passages bringing a kind of clarion call to existence, feeling, vulnerability, openness… communion…to something greater…love…
Reeves approached NYT-bestselling speculative fiction author (and The Matrix, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and monster movie fan) China Miéville to be his co-writer. Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award (the only writer to have won it 3 times), World Fantasy Award, the Hugo Award, and the British Science Fiction Award, he’s also a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. The Norwich, England-born, London-based founding editor of the socialist journal Salvage has a PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics; played RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons as kid; once ran for office; has 5 earrings, 2 cats, and a skulltopus tattoo; cameo’d in Notting Hill; was almost named Banyan; and spent his gap year in Egypt and Zimbabwe.
Fan of: Surrealists and ghost stories; tchotchkes and helicopters.
Not so much: Social media. Scroll through his book recs below.
That book that…
…is on my nightstand:
Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories by Ghassan Kanafani. Wrenching and unendingly important, a collection to which I frequently return.
…everyone should read:
Cygnet by Season Butler. Full disclosure: I’m married to the author. But my love for this book long predates our relationship (I have receipts). Read it and you’ll know why.
…shaped my worldview:
Jawbone by Mónica Ojeda is amazing, and contains an epistolary rumination on the way weird fiction works that’s had a palpable impact on my philosophy.
…I would have blurbed if asked:
A Sweet, Sweet Summer by Jane Gaskell. I wasn’t born when it came out, but I still wish I could have had the honor of blurbing so great and strange a work.
… made me rethink a long-held belief:
The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss by David Bentley Hart provoked the most exciting rethink I’ve had for years. Consciousness, he convinced me, cannot be what I had vaguely persuaded myself I thought it was.
…helped me through a loss:
Rupture(s) by Claire Marin. My French is ropey but with the help of a dictionary and translation software I worked through this. Avidly, and with gratitude.
…I read in one sitting, it was that good:
A Dark Corner by Celia Dale. I’m on a big Celia Dale kick at the moment. No one does psychological acuity or a certain English nastiness so brilliantly. This was the first I read, and still my favorite.
…I recommend over and over again:
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. Hardly original, I know, but it just never ceases to offer more, even as it also mysteriously withdraws, this epochal novel.
…surprised me:
Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein. I don’t know quite what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this lyrical, urgent warning about the state of things.
…I’d want signed by the author:
Ape’s-Face by Marion Fox. A sui generis, unjustly neglected work of weird. Marion Fox is a mysterious figure to me, and having her name within my copy would make it even more of a talisman than it is.
…makes me feel seen:
“The Burrow” by Franz Kafka. How a short story can present so affecting and illuminating a rumination is beyond me.
…should be on every college syllabus:
Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life by Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields. Revelatory, radical and agenda-setting.
…broke my heart:
The Twittering Machine by Richard Seymour. This convinced me I was wrong about how damagingly “social media” works on us – that it was much worse than that.
…I’d like turned into a TV show:
Children of the Sun by Max Schaefer. This never got the recognition it deserved, and it calls out for an adaptation as sensitive and tough-minded as the novel.
…helped me become a better writer:
The Narrator by Michael Cisco. Cisco is the most consistently extraordinary writer of the fantastic working today. He upends my sense of what’s possible.
The literary organization I support:
PalFest, the Palestine Festival of Literature.