What’s on Carrie Bradshaw’s Bookshelf These Days? See the Books Shown on the Latest Episode of ‘And Just Like That…’
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Episode 8 of the show's second season sneaks a peek into Carrie's reading taste—see her picks!
Craig Blankenhorn/Max
Carrie Bradshaw has always lived with books — both her single gal apartment and the more luxurious married lady pad she shared with Big featured ample bookshelves and as a writer herself, her love for the written word is not surprising. Sarah Jessica Parker is an avid reader and literary advocate in real life too. In 2022, she announced the launch of SJP Lit, her book imprint with independent publisher Zando. The actress also helped select Carrie’s books for And Just Like That…, according to Vogue.
In episode 8 of the show’s second season, Carrie’s bibliophile tendencies almost tripped her up — while searching online for a picture of Aidan’s Norfolk, Virginia, farmhouse, she accidentally stumbled upon a beautiful old home in Norfolk, England. As Carrie hands over her phone to show the ladies over brunch, Seema points out that the house doesn’t just look like the home in Howards End, it is the very same dwelling.
At the brunch, Carrie is referring to the movie Howards End — the classic 1992 James Ivory-directed gem starring Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham Carter and Anthony Hopkins — rather than the 1910 book of the same name by E.M. Forster. (There’s also a terrific 2017-18 television series produced by the BBC starring Matthew Macfayden, Hayley Atwell and Joseph Quinn.)
The book’s themes — love, real estate, money, city life vs. country life — are not unfamiliar to Carrie Bradshaw fans; they pop up all over Sex and the City and its successor. But when Carrie reaches up to grab the book in the episode’s last scene, we hear her say “And just like that, I went to Aidan’s farm. It wasn’t Howards End. It was better. It was our new beginning.”
HBO
But what else do we see on that shelf? A kind of odd blend of books — fiction and nonfiction, all mashed together, old and new editions. What can we learn from them? Let’s break it down.
Approaching Zanzibar and Other Plays by Tina Howe
A 1989 book by playwright Howe, who was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 2017. This feels like a SJP choice, more than a Carrie Bradshaw pick.
Howards End by E.M. Forster
If there’s a book you should read from 1910, this is it. A beautifully wrought, wildly entertaining, and thoughtful book. Can you get the gist from the two excellent adaptations mentioned above? Yes. But if you’re looking for a positively delirious read, this is it.
Sony Pictures Classics/courtesy Everett
Helena Bonham Carter, Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins in Howards End.Against Interpretation and Other Essays by Susan Sontag
A collection of essays from the 1960s in which Sontag, brilliant thinker and style icon, thinks about what it means to be a consumer of culture, media and the news. Undoubtedly, this is the kind of book that challenges Carrie, and the rest of us, to bring our most attentive and intelligent selves to the reading of it. Rewarding but not without work, like an uphill hike.
The Watch by Carlo Levi
A novel first published in 1950 about Rome in the period after World War II.
The AI Delusion by Gary Smith
Another somewhat surprising choice, a 2018 book about the value of human input in a world in which decisions are increasingly made by technological tools.
Now You See Them by Elly Griffiths
A 2019 cozy mystery from Great Britain. Somehow this seems like something Charlotte might read more than Carrie.
The Assignation by Joyce Carol Oates
A 1996 collection of super-short and super-intense stories by Oates (the prolific author whose work has been adapted for film often, most recently in 2022’s Blonde, starring Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe).
The Beauty Part by S.J. Perelman
A 1962 play by Perelman, a famed New Yorker writer. The play was notoriously a flop.
Shadows on the Mirror by Frances Fyfield
Published in 1989, this mystery novel stars a British widow who is making ends meet as a paid mistress. We do not expect Carrie to follow in her footsteps.
Nectar by Lily Prior
This 2002 novel has everything — an albino, a beekeeper — but we see this mostly as a book Carrie read as she navigated Season 4 of SATC, when Aidan was being a real buzzkill.
The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalia Harris
This was a huge book in 2021 and will soon be a Hulu series. All episodes drop on September 13.
We Are Not Like Them by Christine Pride and Jo Piazza
A novel published in the autumn of 2021, We Are Not Like Them is unusual in having two authors and alternating two viewpoints to tell a story of interracial friendship and misunderstanding. Perhaps a useful read as the original three women from Sex and the City attempt to forge connections across racial and other lines in this new series?
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