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Published 13:11 16 Mar 2026 GMT
Add us as a preferred source on Google »Jessie Buckley is the woman of the moment, and we couldn't be more in awe of the Irish actress. Following her Best Actress win at the 98th Academy Awards, we're taking a look at the reading list of the Hamnet star, and it's safe to say her taste in books is as exquisite as we expected it to be.
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
One of the best classics of all time, and proof that we can rely on Buckley with a decent reading recommendation.
Victor Frankenstein’s monster is stitched together from the limbs of the dead, taken from ‘the dissecting room and the slaughter-house’. The result is a grotesque being who, rejected by his maker and starved of human companionship, sets out on a journey to seek his revenge.
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Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell
It wouldn't be right if we didn't mention the book that led Jessie Buckley to her first Academy Award win.
On a summer's day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a sudden fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Why is nobody at home?
Their mother, Agnes, is over a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London.
Neither parent knows that Hamnet will not survive the week.
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Outline by Rachel Cusk
In an interview with Inklings, Jessie Buckley recommended Outline by Rachel Cusk, and the way she spoke about this book has us itching to pick up a copy immediately.
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Visit our Her Book Club bookshop for Jessie Buckley's reading list.
What book should Jessie Buckley add to her reading list?
Outline is a novel in ten conversations. Spare and lucid, it follows a novelist teaching a course in creative writing over an oppressively hot summer in Athens. She leads her students in storytelling exercises. She meets other writers for dinner. She goes swimming in the Ionian Sea with her seatmate from the place. The people she encounters speak volubly about themselves, their fantasies, anxieties, pet theories, regrets, and longings. And through these disclosures, a portrait of the narrator is drawn by contrast, a portrait of a woman learning to face a great loss.
@jack_edwards Awards season’s buzziest actress Jessie Buckley reveals her desert island books and required reading on the Inklings Book Club podcast with Paul Mescal 📚📚📚 Listen now to our special Hamnet episode!!
♬ original sound - Jack Edwards
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