It’s pretty rare to catch television showrunners outside of the endless parade of television-related press, so it’s refreshing to see Game of Thrones showrunner David Benioff featured in the New York Times’ style magazine T discussing the 10 books he’d take with him to a deserted island.
And here at last, we can see Benioff’s distaste for youth: “Top that, young bastards,” he says of W.B. Yeats’ “The Circus Animals’ Desertion.” Later, he provides this charming praise for Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger: “Sometimes I get jealous when I’m reading a great book by a younger writer. But ‘White Tiger’ is so good I almost forgot to hate Aravind Adiga.”
Elsewhere, though, there’s some unabashed love for Ernest Hemingway, whose For Whom The Bell Tolls tops the list; there’s another personal note on Things Fall Apart as well (“As the son of a champion wrestler, I was naturally drawn to the grappling hero of Achebe’s masterpiece…”) He also provides a neat micro-review of Georges Simenon’s Dirty Snow, saying it “punches well above its weight class.”
And the Bible is there, too, because “if you were stranded on a desert island, what book would better reward long study?” I can think of a few postmodernists who might have a few lists of their own to answer this question, but judging by this list, I don’t think Benioff is much interested in the weirdos of literature. Still, it’s fun to consider how Benioff’s favorite literature might influence his own writing on- and off-screen.
Here’s the full list. You can head to T to see all of Benioff’s comments and possibly bulk up your summer reading list.
- For Whom the Bell Tolls—Ernest Hemingway
- The Collected Poetry of W.B. Years—W.B. Yeats
- Things Fall Apart—Chinua Achebe
- Murphy—Samuel Beckett
- The Dream Songs—John Berryman
- Lucky Jim—Kingsley Amis
- Dirty Snow—Georges Simenon
- The Holy Bible
- The Member of the Wedding—Carson McCullers
- The White Tiger—Aravind Adiga