Sarah Jessica Parker, best known for her work on screen, spent the past year immersed in a different kind of spotlight: judging the Booker Prize. She's not exactly a newbie in the publishing space—she has her own literary imprint at Zando—but as the New York Times reports, her role as one of the five 2025 judges was a transformative one. That's not too surprising when you consider she had 153 books to read in less than a year, some of them twice. Reading consumed her from the moment she got the first 16 books delivered to her while in rural Ireland for a Christmas holiday.
"My husband soon stopped asking if I wanted to see this play or that musical or this show off-Broadway," she tells the Times. "I was able to be there for the necessary, but if I was at a volleyball game, I sure as hell had a book on my lap, which I was also very nervous about doing because I didn't want anyone to see what I was reading." Parker admitted to initially feeling nervous about sharing her takes on the books with her fellow judges—professional critics and authors—but said the actual conversations were less intimidating than she feared. (The group bonded so much she says they're continuing to read together as a book club.) "If someone disagrees with you, it doesn't mean you're wrong," she realized.
She describes the joy of reading so many special books but the grief that also marked her year: grief over books that didn't make the cut, grief over the experience coming to a close. "I was looking up Elisabeth Kubler-Ross' stages of loss," she joked. "I can't figure out where I am, but I'm not at acceptance, I can tell you that much." (Read about this year's winner, David Szalay's Flesh, here.)
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