25 Most Relevant Books, According to Netflix’s “You”

Popular culture surrounds us and influences us, whether we like it or not. Pop culture can be partly defined as “the beliefs and practices that groups of people have in common.” Pop culture says “this is what you should care about.” It sends us messages about how to live our lives. Prime example: TLC’s What Not to Wear. Almost everything around us is affected by pop culture, including music, clothes, movies, shows, and yes, even books.

A Netflix show released in 2019 called You influenced pop culture in a different sort of way. Although You is an intense psychological thriller about a sociopath who makes his living by stalking women, the show had a strange focus on influencing book culture.

The main character, Joe, works at a bookstore. He meets Beck, his next victim, and their first conversation is about books.

“Thats sad, people buying books because they’re popular, not because they want to be moved or changed in some way”

“Yeah, it’s an epidemic”

Then Joe makes fun of a guy wearing glasses, looking at books by Dan Brown.

“He’s going to wander around for 5 or 10 minutes just to find something legitimate to buy with it.”

“At the end of the day people really are disappointing, aren’t they?”

Then they have a conversation about Paula Fox’s new book, Desperate Characters. Joe praises her taste in books.

“I feel weirdly validated”

Joe goes on to silently ridicule the Dan Brown man.

“He’s just pissed he has to buy Salinger to feel respectable when all he really wants to do is eat Cheetos and jerk it to iporn before washing it all down with a Dan Brown chaser.”

The characters in You are mostly rich and influential college kids, including the socialite Peach Salinger who comes from an extremely wealthy family. She is a distant cousin of J.D. Salinger, author of Catcher in the Rye, and Franny and Zooey. At a fancy soirée hosted by Peach, we see a snapshot of Peach’s rare and collectible books.

Some of Peach’s Books

We can see even with the opening scene of You the power of influence. This show criticizes your taste in books and challenges you to explore new genres, to not feel left out of the conversation.

The show also seems to be sending the message that if you read Dan Brown or any other pop culture author you are not respectable. Joe is clearly a judgmental person, so aloof that he completely writes off a person who is not on his intellectual level of book selection. See this article written about how hating popular things does not make you an interesting person.

That being said, Joe does highlight the truth that people will judge you on your book interests, just like the car you drive, the clothes you wear, and the way you speak. Whether you care or not is up to you, but when someone at a job interview asks you what your favorite book is, are you really going to say “Twilight!”

I was once asked my favorite book at a job interview. This is because it says a lot about a person, first of all, if you read, and if so, what you read. It is wonderful to read at all, but it’s good to have a good “relevant” book in your back pocket.

Throughout the series You, there are numerous references to many classics as well as relevant modern novels.

Here is a list of all the hidden book references in You (with the help of this article, you can add all them all to your reading list:

1. Don Quixote
2. The Three Musketeers
3. Sleeping Beauties
4. Frankenstein
5. Ozma of Oz
6. The Alienist
7. The Count of Monte Cristo
8. Middle March
9. Pride and Prejudice
10. Wuthering Heights
11. Black Swan Green
12. On Beauty
13. Crime and Punishment
14. The Power
15. Gold Fame Citrus
16. Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives
17. Play it As it Lays
18. Nostromo
19. The Master and Margarita
20. Berlin Wild
21. Brave New World
22. Desperate Characters
23. Ivanhoe
24. A Streetcar Named Desire
25. The Red and the Black