What Kaia Gerber, Graydon Carter, and More Interview Stars Read in 2025

In 2025, we talked to a lot of celebrities. So, as the year rounds to a close, we took the occasion to comb through our favorite stories and compile their cultural recommendations. Below, check out what Nicole Kidman, Kaia Gerber, and other friends of the magazine were reading this year.

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NICOLE KIDMAN

“I’m actually reading Reese Witherspoon’s [Gone Before Goodbye]. It’s a great thriller. I’m very, very proud of her for that.”

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CAILEE SPAENY

“I’m currently reading Joan Didion’s books, which are just beautiful and devastatingly honest. She talks very simply and concisely. To be able to say something so profound in such a simple way, she really is one of a kind. What are you reading right now?”

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KATHY GRIFFIN

“I like law textbooks, and then I’ll throw in Down the Drain by Julia Fox, which I loved. I had no idea she did that much heroin. I mean, half of the book is her doing heroin, but I think she’s great and very smart and a true feminist. But I’ll also say: Middlemarch by George Eliot, Pride and Prejudice. I went back and did some of the classics—East of Eden, The Great Gatsby. Right now I’m reading 1776 by David McCullough. And when I’m done with that, he wrote a fucking book about the Panama Canal, how it started and shit, and that fascinates me. And I’ll do some fiction now and again, too.”

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OTTESSA MOSHFEGH

“I am halfway through reading Trip again. It is so fucking good.”

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KAIA GERBER

“I read Bonjour Tristesse first when I was Cécile’s age, and then every time I’ve revisited it I kind of have a different perspective, because I’ve changed.”

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TAO LIN

“For the first phase of my writing career, I read a lot of Lorrie Moore, Joy Williams, Richard Yates, Lydia Davis. In the second half, I’ve read much less fiction. Now I get inspiration from nonfiction books. Most recently, ones on spirituality—especially books on near-death experiences and reincarnation.”

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STELLA BAREY

“Erotisme by [Georges] Bataille is an all-time favorite. The Nude by Kenneth Clark explores the nude as an art form through history and is an amazing book. I also love anything by [Marquis] de Sade (father of sadism) and [Leopold von Sacher] Masoch (father of masochism). A fun one that everyone should read on anal is The Surrender by Toni Bentley. I met her in person, she’s older now, but in the 90s she started writing a book about her transcendental experiences of anal.”

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KATIE KITAMURA

“I just finished Cristina Rivera Garza’s Death Takes Me. The book has the structure of a mystery, but none of the solutions are necessarily apparent, or fixed, and the reader is asked to interpret constantly. I find that incredibly engaging, the fact that I can read it multiple times and come out with different things and see different aspects of it.”

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JIA TOLENTINO

“[Forbidden Notebook], by Alba de Céspedes, and it’s an older Italian novel about a woman confined within a marriage and domesticity and children. She starts keeping a notebook because she’s feeling trapped. You expect this woman to become liberated by articulating herself to herself. Instead, it traps her more.”

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LEXEE SMITH

“I was reading this book called An Apprenticeship [or The Book of Pleasures] by Clarice Lispector; I just love her so much. There was a conversation with her and her lover in the book, and he was like, “The way that you showed up to the ball and hid behind your eyeliner, I love it just as much as whenever you don’t feel like hiding.” There are times where I’m like, “I need eyeliner,” and also eyeliner me is a different version than no-eyeliner me.”

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GRAYDON CARTER

“Page Six is glorious to read, often terrifying to be in.”

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