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Just in time for Halloween, actress and author Hilarie Burton gives us a look at her bewitching bookshelves, filled with first-editions and haunting reads. Find out which book she wants to turn into a movie, her recs on feminist fantasy horror, and why you should always sort your books by color.
Burton's own book, 'Grimoire Girl: A Memoir of Magic and Mischief,' now.
Burton's own book, 'Grimoire Girl: A Memoir of Magic and Mischief,' now.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00These are the books that are my first editions, my first love, some of my childhood books,
00:05and I really cherish a lot of the items in this room.
00:15Do you know something that I hate? Like, I really hate this.
00:19When book snobs make fun of people for color coordinating their shelves.
00:24And I'm here to tell you, as your friendly local witch, that color is one of the most important things in your life.
00:32And honoring color in your life is something that you should be doing.
00:36And for people like me, who have a photographic memory, I might not be able to remember the name of an author or the exact name of a book.
00:44But, I promise you, I remember what color the cover is.
00:48So I know how to come back and find things many, many years after I've read them.
00:54So I think it's very, very important to give credit where credit is due.
00:59And there is a mystical woman out there who wrote a book that really changed the course of my life.
01:07This book, Italian Folk Magic.
01:11Mary Grace Faroon is a nurse, a family woman.
01:16She lives in Canada.
01:17She is a member of her community.
01:20I don't know that you would know that she's a witch.
01:24And that's what I loved.
01:26It is all about her family's Italian heritage.
01:29About the magical thinking that she inherited from all the women in her family.
01:34About the matriarchs.
01:35About the rituals and traditions and the way of looking at things.
01:40Whether it's religious or superstitious or magical or really like sincere and holy to you.
01:48I think that there is a generational and cultural gift here that I really felt like I was lacking.
01:57And so I read this book and I was so happy for her that she had people in her life to walk her through her birthright.
02:02But then I wanted to find my own.
02:05And I did that by writing Grimoire Girl.
02:09Because if you don't have it, but you want to pass it on to your kids, sometimes you just got to make it up.
02:16And that's what I did.
02:18So thank you, Mary Grace.
02:20I don't know what I would have done without this book.
02:23It was a game changer.
02:24This next book.
02:26Oh, I just cry looking at it.
02:28I really do.
02:30It means so much to me.
02:31Ray Bradbury wrote this book, Dandelion Wine, about his hometown.
02:36And it was a tribute to community and the elders in the community and the children of the community and the folklore of the community.
02:45And about finding magic in just those stupid, silly, little everyday things.
02:50And as my hometown was being taken over by big business and very quickly disappearing, to read this total stranger's account of their home that was written with so much love.
03:02It changed what I thought writing was for.
03:07And I strive to live up to that expectation.
03:12But this book makes me cry so much because my husband knew how much I loved this book.
03:18He's seen me read it dozens of times.
03:20And so for Christmas, he got me this first edition that is signed by Ray Bradbury, July 15, 1958, for Sid with admiration for a fellow teller of tales.
03:37All right, now speaking of novelists that I love, this writer and I actually share a very deep affinity for Ray Bradbury, for public libraries.
03:49We've talked about this at length, but Alice Hoffman, the author of Practical Magic and, oh God, the Red Garden is so good.
04:01She knows how to tell a story about unlikable people so that by the end of it, you're rooting for them.
04:08And as someone who feels unlikable sometimes, I like that there is someone in this world like Alice Hoffman who can find redemption.
04:17She sent me just the single most gorgeous book.
04:22This is a special edition leather-bound copy of Magic Lessons, which is a part of the storytelling of the Owen Sisters.
04:32So if you like practical magic, Magic Lessons goes all the way back to the root of the Owen Sisters story.
04:40And it is just lush and fabulous.
04:44And Alice is someone who I want to celebrate every opportunity I get.
04:49Okay, these last couple books are so near and dear to me.
04:54One of the questions in the list of questions that I could answer for this shelf portrait was,
05:00am I an e-book reader or do I like paper books?
05:03And I think it goes without saying that I like paper books because I think that we attach energy to things.
05:09And I know I want to absorb the energy that I get from certain books.
05:14But I also want to imprint my own and then pass them on to other people that I care about.
05:19And so these books have meant a great deal to me.
05:23Edna St. Vincent Millay, I talk about her a ton in Grimoire Girl.
05:28She is someone who I am just so inspired by and who, if she lived today, would still be considered audacious and exceptional.
05:38And so this is her collection, Renaissance and Other Poems.
05:41And it is a first edition.
05:43And when I got it, it was important to me because my publisher is Harper One and her publisher is Harper and Brothers.
05:54And so to think that I have been able to accomplish something that my hero did, pretty cool.
06:04This other book is from Truman Capote.
06:07It is The Grass Harp.
06:09It is a story about a young boy who runs away with one of his aunts and her best friend.
06:17And they live in a treehouse and they come up against some oppression from the town and from standards and normal behavior.
06:29And they push back against that.
06:31And I love Truman Capote for finding the radical color in a small community.
06:39It's my favorite kind of storytelling.
06:40And this book is signed by him.
06:44Look at his little teeny tiny handwriting.
06:46Oh, God, I just love him.
06:48Whoever Rita, Rita Allen is who this book is too.
06:52God bless Rita.
06:53And then this last book is a first edition copy of The Grapes of Wrath and was a wedding gift from our dearly, dearly loved Willie Garson.
07:07It was something that I wrote about in my book because it meant so much to me.
07:12And I have words from the note he wrote along with this book tattooed on my arm.
07:17My favorite childhood book is this series, Katie John.
07:27I didn't grow up in a family that had a lot of money.
07:29And so we just hung out at the public library.
07:31And there was this set of books about a tomboy named Katie John who left the big city and moved to a historic home, kind of out in the middle of nowhere, and encountered ghosts and a lot of mischief.
07:45And if all of that is sounding very familiar to you, I feel like I've modeled my life after this book series.
07:53It really made a mark on me and our Sterling Park Public Library knew exactly what direction to point me in.
08:02I'm going to divulge a secret right now.
08:03And I swear to you, if any of you steal this intellectual property or come from my story, I'm going to fist fight you.
08:10But I read this book, The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll.
08:14It is the life story of Dare Wright.
08:17I read it when it first came out.
08:18I have been obsessed with it.
08:20Dare Wright was a children's book author who split her time between New York City and the Outer Banks, which I'm very in love with.
08:29And she wrote really interesting stories for kids.
08:33Some of them have been controversial.
08:35But she was such a weird little fairy of a human.
08:39And telling her story is something I've always wanted to do.
08:42And so when I start directing, this is something that I very much want to put on screen.
08:50It is Absolutely Good Neighbors by Sarah Langan.
08:54I think she is just such an amazing, sinister writer.
08:59And what's so wonderful about her work is that she understands domesticity and how insidious it can be.
09:09She understands the microcosm of a neighborhood and what it means on a grander scale.
09:16And she can find the absolute horror in the mundane.
09:21And I respect her so much.
09:23Without question, my answer is Angela Slatter.
09:27She is an author from that collection, Hex Life.
09:31And I reached out to her and told her I really, really respected her work.
09:35And she started sending me copies of her work.
09:38I have just shelves of her books.
09:40And I love each one more than the next.
09:42I felt so honored that she named a character after me in her last book.
09:48She is such a wonderful fantasy horror writer.
09:53Because she understands femininity.
09:55And she understands how it has been missing in the genre.
10:00And she understands how to weave it back in and retell an old story through a feminine lens.
10:05So that it belongs to us now.
10:08And I think that that's a really important skill and a really valuable kind of writer to have in your circle of friends.
10:16The universal truths of oppression of women and magical thinking exist everywhere.
10:23And so I so respect that imaginative take.
10:27So many people get bogged down with historical accuracies.
10:30And Angela plays by her own rules.
10:32She's fantastic.
10:33My favorite place to read a book.
10:36I mean, I want to say it's this room.
10:38But it's not.
10:38So let's go see how messy my house is.
10:40I have one chair in particular.
10:44And it's this one.
10:48That's my reading chair.
10:50And there's scooters.
10:51And there's messy kitchens.
10:53And there's 13-year-olds hanging out.
10:56But that is mommy's chair.
11:00And that's where she reads books.
11:03I normally buy books at really small independent booksellers.
11:08And usually when I'm traveling.
11:10So my favorite thing in the world is going to a town that I've never been to before and finding the local bookstore and just making friends.
11:19My all-time fictional crush.
11:22Guys, this is so toxic.
11:24It's really toxic.
11:26But I was a Heathcliff girl from Wuthering Heights.
11:29I had so many really dramatic romances where I just kept falling for Heathcliffs over and over.
11:37And my husband was a bit of a Heathcliff when I met him.
11:41But did the work.
11:45And so that's really what we all want, right?
11:47When I read Here's Negan in preparation for doing the episode of The Walking Dead with my husband, I would be lying if I said I didn't have a bit of a crush on that just bad, bad, bad boy.
12:01I can't help it.
12:02And that leaves us with, ta-da, Grimoire Girl.
12:07I feel like so many of the books I talked to you about today are deeply woven into this.
12:16One of the first things I wanted to do in the very first chapter was give people a list of books that influenced me.
12:23Take whatever lights up your world and pull out the quotes that matter to you.
12:28Write them down in your own grimoire.
12:30Keep the poetry, whether it's song lyrics or sonnets, whatever it is.
12:36Keep it close to you so that you can share it easily and it can be there for you in times of need.
12:44And so as we wrap up this spooky evening in the rain together,
12:48I really hope you find your own grimoire and that you fill it up with stories and ideas and spells and things that you love.
12:59And if you need any help, Grimoire Girl is there for you.
13:02Thank you for watching Shelf Portrait and for checking out my book, Grimoire Girl.
13:09So thanks for hanging out with me and while you guys are at it, you should subscribe to Marie Claire.
13:15Bye.
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