Poets & Writers Theater

“For me, books are the things that tell you what you need to do in life and they’re also the things that help you make sense of your life.” Will Schwalbe, author of Books for Living (Knopf, 2016), speaks with PBS NewsHour’s Jeffrey Brown about the importance of reading and the books that have taught him life lessons such as Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train (Riverhead Books, 2015), James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room (Dial Press, 1956), and Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon (Knopf, 1977).

The feature film adaptation of British author Paula Hawkins's best-selling thriller, The Girl on the Train (Riverhead Books, 2015), relocates the novel from London to New York and follows a woman who becomes entangled in a mystery. Directed by Tate Taylor with a screenplay by Erin Cressida Wilson, the film stars Emily Blunt, Haley Bennett, Justin Theroux, Luke Evans, Allison Janney, and Laura Prepon.

One BookTuber offers his view on 2015's book lists from the New York Times to Publishers Weekly, Amazon to Goodreads. Paula Hawkins's debut novel, The Girl on the Train (Riverhead Books, 2015), James Hannaham's Delicious Foods (Little, Brown, 2015), and Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me (Spiegel & Grau, 2015) are books that top the lists. 

"I like the fact that in Rachel's case, she's not just unreliable to the reader and to other characters, but even to herself. She can't trust herself." Author Paula Hawkins speaks about the main character of her debut novel, The Girl on the Train (Riverhead Books, 2015), with Becky Anderson, owner of Anderson's Bookshop in Naperville, Illinois.