PARADE MAGAZINE: Nathan Fillion Reveals Why He's Hooked on Books
by David Hochman
June 08, 2012
As the son of two high school English teachers, Nathan Fillion learned early on that books possess magical qualities. For one thing, they can stop a clock. “Whatever our bedtime was as kids, we could stay up an extra half hour if we were reading. My parents didn’t care as long as I was under the spell of a Stephen King or a Douglas Adams,” recalls Fillion, who now plays a writer himself—mystery novelist–turned–crime solver Richard Castle—on ABC’s comedy-drama Castle. Those late nights growing up in Edmonton, Canada, got Fillion addicted. “Now I read in bed. I read at work. I read standing in line,” he says. “It’s like, ‘Hello, my name is Nathan and I am a reader...’”
... Snappy dialogue comes naturally to the actor, whose parents, especially his mom, trained him early to read “cold,” as he puts it. “Being able to read something aloud with feeling the first time you looked at it was very important,” he says. “Now if I see an adult who reads aloud in a monotone, I say to myself, ‘Your mother failed you.’”
Fillion’s favorite books are a fitting selection for an actor who has earned serious cult status—just ask his million-plus Twitter followers—playing a superhuman priest on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and a spaceship captain on Firefly and its movie spin-off, Serenity. “I’m the biggest geek of all,” he says. “Adventure, fantasy, comic books—I can’t get enough...”
Fillion is a cofounder of Kids Need to Read, which provides books for schools, libraries, and literacy programs.
Nathan Fillion's Favorite Reads: [follow link for complete list]
... A Song of Ice and Fire series
by George R. R. Martin “I just read these recently. Molly Quinn, who plays my daughter on Castle, got me into HBO’s Game of Thrones, which is thrilling. [A Game of Thrones is the first volume in Martin’s fantasy series.] I was transported.”
The Spenser detective novels
by Robert B. Parker “Spenser’s supertough, but he’s not indestructible. He’s got just the right amount of macho. If they remake that TV series [Spenser: For Hire, in which Robert Urich starred in the 1980s], I’d be interested. That’d be cool.”
