Today James Franco did a shelf awareness, discussing the books he’s reading now, and what’s had a lasting impact on his life. In the US we adore our celebrities, and look to them as models, for better or worse. Any opportunity celebrities take to talk about literature, then, and about reading for the sake of reading is an unqualified good. The titles Franco lists brought me back about 7 years or so, to a conversation I remember engaging frequently during and after grad school.

I love reading and always have. Since I was a kiddo. I grew up on comics, fantasy series and mass market sci-fi from the 60s and 70s that my dad collected (like, thousands). I then went full literary snob sometime around the end of high-school. I studied literature in school and graduate school. Books are in my blood and I am always interested in what people read, and how people present reading to the public at large.

At one point in my life (around 25 or so) I realized that, for all my years of reading, almost everything I had read (almost) was by white men. Great stuff, mind you. Books I loved and still love dearly. But a pretty limited perspective on the world. I mean white men are just one category of humans, and if you only allow one human perspective to make you who you are, not only will you never see beyond yourself, but you’ll never really get to see why you are not getting the whole picture.

I thought: this is stupid. I’m already a white male. It’s the only perspective I actually know that I know. Why am I only reading the one human perspective that I already occupy? Isn’t this why I read? To get away from me? So I reconciled it by deliberately reading non-white male authors.

Whatever you want to read, you can find perspective. Comics or poetry or genre or literary fiction. I exchanged Asimov for Bulter and Le Guin, and McCarthy for Carol Shields, and Whitman for the Harlem Renaissance, and Brubaker and Bendis for Kelly Sue DeConnick.

Not exclusively. I still read those guys. Asimov and McCarthy and Brubaker and Bendis are still masters and worth reading. But I read them for years. Now, they’re in the minority.

For this, I’m a better reader and a better human. I think so anyway. So. I thought I’d take the time this morning and pass this advice to you, James Franco. Mix up your bookshelf. Add some diversity, for its own sake, James. Everything’s better that way. Everything.

Advice like this may seem obvious and a bore, but it always comes with push back. And that push back is a reminder that this advice still needs stating outright. Mr. Franco, read more women and more people of color. If you already do this, add that to your public life so that the fans you have know you do it, and that it matters. Because it matters.

Also, you should read Infinite Jest. It’s hilarious, and beautiful, and worth it.

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