00:00Taylor Swift reads like it is a second job. She turns those books into songs and soundtracks.
00:05One won her a Grammy, another one turned into a Whisper Quiet track 5.
00:09You know all the elements of like Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca, that book?
00:12Here are 10 books Taylor loves, and the one at number 1 is the story she is still obsessed with
00:17right now.
00:18Let's start at 10.
00:19The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
00:22Taylor has been quietly borrowing from F. Scott Fitzgerald for years, and the receipts are all over her track lists.
00:28On Reputation she sings the line, feeling so Gatsby for that whole year, picturing wild parties, pools off balconies, and
00:34a champagne sea right before the whole thing falls apart.
00:37That is Jay Gatsby in four words, the glamour and the emptiness sitting together.
00:41She does it again, hoping the next woman her ex ends up with will be, a beautiful fool, which is
00:46the exact wish Daisy Buchanan makes for her baby girl.
00:49Few lines later she reaches for the green light of forgiveness, and any English class will tell you the green
00:53light is the most famous symbol in the book.
00:55Taylor has said she loves how Fitzgerald can build a world so pretty you forget your own for a few
01:00minutes, which is basically her mission as a songwriter.
01:02The novel itself, from 1925, is short, gorgeous, and sharp about wanting more than you can have.
01:08Gatsby reinvents himself, chases a married woman, and throws money at the past hoping it comes back.
01:13Next up is a book that made a whole generation cry.
01:16The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
01:19Taylor once called John Green her favorite author, full stop, and you can hear his fingerprints on her writing.
01:24The Fault in Our Stars follows two teenagers who meet in a cancer support group and fall in love while
01:29knowing exactly how little time they might have.
01:31Green writes them as sharp, funny, and painfully real, so the sad parts land like a truck.
01:36If you have ever felt truly seen by the song, Clean Off Red, this is the same emotional wiring, that
01:41idea of surviving something that almost broke you and coming out the other side.
01:45Green refuses to package their pain as a pure tragedy or a tidy little inspiration, and that honesty is a
01:51big part of why the book still holds up years later.
01:53It basically set the standard for a whole generation of young adult books that finally took teen feelings seriously.
01:59People carried this novel everywhere, cried on planes over it, and then lined up for the movie.
02:03It is short, it is devastating, and it earns every tear.
02:06Up next is a book from a writer Taylor treats, like a personal obsession.
02:11Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney
02:13Taylor name-dropped Sally Rooney as a current influence back in a 2019 Entertainment Weekly interview, and this debut novel
02:20is the perfect example of why.
02:21It follows Frances, a cool and guarded college student in Dublin, who gets tangled up with an older married couple
02:27and slowly falls for the husband.
02:28Here is the twist Swifties love.
02:30Joe Alwyn, Taylor's partner for years, actually starred in the television adaptation of it.
02:35Getting deep inside one person's head and living in their thoughts is the entire vibe of her two sister albums,
02:40Folklore and Evermore.
02:41She has gushed about Rooney's other novel, Normal People 2, so this is a full-blown author crush.
02:46Rooney writes in short, plain, almost cold sentences that somehow hit harder because of how simple they are.
02:52She pays close attention to power, to money, and to that painful gap between what people say and what they
02:57secretly want.
02:57The whole thing reads like eavesdropping on the saddest group chat in Dublin.
03:01Published in 2017, turned Rooney into one of the most talked-about young writers alive.
03:05Next is the memoir that sent Taylor and millions of other readers looking for themselves.
03:10Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
03:12Taylor picked this memoir for a reading campaign called, You Are What You Read, which tells you it means something
03:18to her.
03:19Elizabeth Gilbert wrote it after a brutal divorce left her lost, so she spent a year chasing three things in
03:24three countries,
03:25good food in Italy, prayer and stillness in India, and balance and love in Indonesia.
03:29It became one of the biggest books of its decade, the kind people carried onto planes and beaches for years,
03:34and it later turned into a movie starring Julia Roberts.
03:37Underneath all the travel, it is really about hunting for meaning outside the usual markers of a successful life,
03:42which is a very Taylor thing to care about.
03:44You can feel that same restless search in her music, the sense that awards and money do not automatically equal
03:49peace.
03:49Taylor has also praised Gilbert's later work, including the follow-up called Committed,
03:53so this looks like a genuine ongoing fandom she keeps returning to.
03:57It is warm, honest, and a little messy in the best way.
04:00Coming up is a quiet little book about a girl who refuses to blend in.
04:05Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli
04:07Taylor has stood in front of actual classrooms and talked about this one,
04:11and she described the magic of it to a room full of students in a way that maps almost word
04:16for word onto her own message to her fans.
04:18That is Stargirl in a sentence.
04:20She is a new girl at a normal high school who wears strange clothes,
04:23sings happy birthday to total strangers,
04:25and carries a pet rat around and nobody knows what to do with her.
04:28That individuality rubs off on everyone else and they all want to be like her.
04:31It was one of the first books that showed a young Taylor that a girl could be the hero of
04:34the story just by being the weird one.
04:36Jerry Spinelli never hands you an easy answer, which is exactly what makes it stick.
04:41The whole book is a quiet celebration of not caring what the cool kids think,
04:44and Stargirl's oddball kindness slowly softens the meanest hallways in the school.
04:48That tug-of-war between fitting in and staying true to yourself is the fight Taylor keeps writing about.
04:53It came out in 2000 and later became a Disney movie.
04:56Next is the book she says changed how she sees the world.
04:59To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
05:02Taylor has said more than once that this novel really changed the way she looked at life,
05:07and she loves reading for the very same reason she loves music.
05:10That kind of writing, she says, makes your mind wander and makes your whole world feel more vast.
05:15Harper Lee's story follows young Scout Finch in the segregated South as her father, a lawyer,
05:20defends a black man falsely accused of a crime.
05:22It is about courage, fairness, and seeing the world from someone else's porch before you dare to judge them.
05:27The book treats empathy as something you actively practice,
05:30climbing into another person's skin and walking around in it,
05:33which is a lesson every good songwriter needs.
05:35Those are themes Taylor circles constantly.
05:37The courage to stand alone and the ache of watching your innocence slip away.
05:41It hits differently at 10, at 20, and at 30.
05:44She has also said she loves writers who end a chapter in a way that yanks you into the next
05:48one,
05:49which is exactly how she builds a song so the biggest feeling lands late.
05:52Next is a book she loved so much she ended up in the movie.
05:56The Giver by Lois Lowry
05:58Taylor loved The Giver so much that she landed an actual role in it when it hit the big screen.
06:03She played Rosemary, a small but haunting character, and got to act opposite Jeff Bridges.
06:08Lois Lowry's story is set in a society that looks perfect on the surface because it has erased pain,
06:13color, and choice, along with everything that makes life feel like life.
06:16Boy named Jonas is chosen to hold all the memories the community threw away,
06:20and as those old memories come back, he realizes what his so-called perfect world actually cost.
06:25The Giver is a staple of middle school reading lists and, funnily enough,
06:28one of the most challenged and banned books in America, targeted for the very ideas that make
06:32it great. You can see why a young Taylor connected with it. A quiet kid handed a big feeling and
06:36told
06:37to carry it for everyone. The writing is simple, and the gut punch is enormous. It is the kind of
06:42book you finish in a day and think about for years. Coming up is the novel that pulled a brand
06:46new song straight out of her. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
06:51Taylor got so lost in this novel that she did something she almost never does. She wrote a
06:56whole new song called Carolina for the film without anyone even asking her to. Delia Owens tells the
07:01story of Kaya, a girl abandoned by her family and left to raise herself in the marshes of North
07:05Carolina, surviving alone while the nearby town treats her like a rumor. When a local golden boy
07:10turns up dead, everyone immediately points a finger at the strange girl from the marsh.
07:14Daisy Edgar-Jones ended up playing Kaya in the film, and the story leans hard on abandonment,
07:18survival, and knowing one wild patch of the world better than anyone else alive.
07:22You can hear why it grabbed Taylor. It is lonely, beautiful, and full of a girl proving the whole
07:27town raw. The nature writing is stunning, the mystery keeps you turning pages, and Kaya is
07:31impossible to forget. It spent years near the top of the bestseller lists for a reason. The book came
07:36out in 2018 and sold more than 10 million copies. Next is the song and the book that first tied
07:41Taylor
07:41to a giant movie franchise. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
07:46When the first Hunger Games movie needed a haunting song, Taylor teamed up with The Civil
07:51Wars and wrote, Safe and Sound, and she has always framed that team up as a happy accident.
07:56The Civil Wars happened to be in Lowe's Angels on a day off. Taylor happened to be writing that same
08:00day, and they came in and wrote the whole thing in the couple of hours they had before their own
08:04show that night. That song went on to win a Grammy for best song written for visual media.
08:08Suzanne Collins built a brutal world where kids are forced to fight to the death on live television
08:13while a rich capital watches for fun. At its heart it is about Katniss volunteering to save
08:17her little sister, which is exactly the kind of fierce, protective love Taylor writes into her
08:22own songs. The Hunger Games came out in 2008 and grew into a giant trilogy set in a ruined future
08:28nation called Painem. The books are fast, dark, and impossible to put down. Next is the one book
08:33she's still completely obsessed with right now. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
08:38Here she is, Taylor's number one. Taylor read Rebecca and connected hard with the main character
08:43around the Evermore era in 2020, and the song Tolerate It, track five, is written straight from
08:48the point of view of du Maurier's nervous young narrator. By 2025 she was fully obsessed, especially
08:54with hearing it read out loud. Do you audiobooks? Yes, constantly. What's your, what? Daphne du Maurier's
09:01novel is pure gothic mood, a shy young woman who marries a rich widower and moves into his enormous
09:06estate, where the memory of his glamorous dead first wife haunts every single room. The narrator
09:11is so overshadowed that du Maurier never even gives her a first name. Taylor cannot get enough
09:15of that heavy, mysterious atmosphere. If you've got like an old, like, like rambling, shambles,
09:23old British mansion covered in moss or ivy. That is the exact feeling she chases in her spookier
09:30and more cinematic songs. She has basically turned this whole book into the blueprint for every
09:34audiobook she picks now. That sounds like a great book. If you got any of that, I'm gonna need to
09:39read that. And when I say read that, I'm gonna need someone to read that to me. Rebecca came out
09:45in 1938, has never gone out of print, and even became an Oscar-winning Alfred Hitchcock film. It is
09:51haunting, romantic, and impossible to shake, and it is the story still living rent-free in Taylor's head
09:56today. Like this video, click on the cards showing on your screen for more.
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