Marilyn Monroe's Books: 13 Titles That Were On Her Shelf

13 Books On Marilyn Monroe's Bookshelf

What couldn't Marilyn Monroe do? The stunning actress is remembered for her beauty and captivating on-screen presence, but, as most book nerds know, she was also a voracious reader and writer. Nerds everywhere have drooled over photos of her thumbing through books on Goya or sunbathing with James Joyce's Ulysses in-hand.

Fragments [Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, $17.00], a new book that anthologizes poems, notes and letters by Monroe, offers a glimpse into her fascinating reading life. Not only did she seem to adore Hemingway and Steinbeck, but she even tried her own hand at creative writing.

Brainpickings.org excerpted a poem from the book, which begins "Only parts of us will ever/Touch parts of others." The article also mentioned that her personal library contained over 400 books.

Here are 13 of the novels that Marilyn kept in her collection (which can be viewed in its entirety on Library Thing):

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

13 Books From Marilyn Monroe's Shelf

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