All the Book References in YOU Season 1

Caveat to article title: *All the book references I noticed* in Netflix’s YOU. Photo Cred: Get Literary.

Who doesn’t love a snarky narrator with a penchant for books? Admittedly, that narrator has some less likable qualities like stalking and murdering other humans. But beyond those not-subtle character flaws, YOU’S Joe played by Penn Badgley (See: Gossip Girl, Easy A, John Tucker Must Die, etc and his indie pop band: Mothxr) is a fan of the stacks (book stacks). And as a bibliophile myself, I thought it would be fun to pick out all the book references alluded to in YOU or shown. Because YOU is a show that is very self-aware, I considered background books as relevant as the ones overtly alluded to. So, unlike other lists that focus only on the books featured overtly in YOU, I tried to go above and beyond pulling out titles wherever I could find them in scenes for a fuller referential list:

* Desperate Characters by Paula Fox (Pilot — S1.E1)
* Pandora’s Keepers: Nine Men and the Atomic Bomb by Brian VanDeMark (Joe’s bookshelf, S1.E1)
* Sinking the Rising Sun: Dog Fighting & Dog Bombing in World War II by William E. Davis (Joe’s bookshelf, S1.E1)
* Franny & Zoe by J.D. Salinger (S1.E1)
* The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (S1.E1)
* Don Quixote by (S1.E1)
* The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown (S1.E1)
* The Frenzy by Francesca Lia Block (S1.E2)
* Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (S1.E2)
* On the Road by Jack Kerouac (S1.E2)
* Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace…