Riley Keough Shares Books That Made a Difference

Oprah’s 108th Book Club pick From Here to the Great Unknown is, among other things, a story of inheritance. Cowritten by Elvis’ daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, and granddaughter Riley Keough, the memoir traces the lineage of fame, addiction, grief, and love over generations.

While the family has been through tragedy and public scrutiny, they are united by their history, their musical talent, and the books they shared. Here, Riley Keough shares ten reads that shaped her and her mother’s lives, as well as inspired their shared story.

The Heroin Diaries, by Nikki Sixx

This harrowing account of the Mötley Crüe star’s year of spiraling drug addiction was one of “my mom’s favorites,” Riley told us, “She really loved memoirs, especially musicians’ memoirs, and extra especially heavy metal musicians’ memoirs.” Told in a mix of diary entries the legendary bassist wrote in the haze of his benders and as commentary written after the fact by the now sober Stixx as well as the people who knew and loved him through the darkest parts of his addiction, this book is a testament to the human potential to start over, and to writings ability to transmute pain into purpose; “She thought it was honest,” Riley told us.

The Color Purple, by Alice Walker

It turns out Oprah and Lisa Marie have more in common than both having relatives with the last name Presley! According to Riley, Lisa Marie thought the Pulitzer Prize-winning story of Cecie’s journey from a sexually abused child into a self-actualized woman was “the most moving novel she’d ever read.” Oprah, of course, holds the book in similar esteem, recalling how she used to carry a backpack to and from work full of copies of Walker’s novel, which she would distribute to colleagues and passersby alike; “Reading that book was life-altering, liberating, self-affirming,” Oprah explained, “It was everything.”

Will There Really Be a Morning? by Frances Farmer

Published two years after her death, Farmer’s controversial memoir recounts her rise to silver screen fame—starring opposite heartthrobs like Cary Grant and Bing Crosby—as well as her battles with addiction, mental illness, and involuntary hospitalization that characterized much of her adult life. Though Lisa Marie “loved” the book, for Riley, it is a bittersweet read; “There are, for me, painful echoes to [my mother’s] own story and to the posthumous publication of her own memoir,” she told us, “Their experiences were very different, but a lot of the feelings were similar, and it made my mom feel less alone.” Though Farmer’s life was deeply tragic, her life story, Riley believes, gave Lisa Marie hope. “With Frances’s book and other memoirs, she felt that she could learn from the mistakes of others.”

The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien

“My dad used to read The Hobbit to me and my brother at bedtime,” Riley recalls, “It’s the first real memory I have with an adult book.” Like so many children before (and after!) her, young Riley fell headfirst into J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic tale of wizards, dwarfs, and all-consuming greed. The book captured her childhood imagination—and set the groundwork for her adult reverence for literature’s power to transport and transform.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, by J.K. Rowling

“It wasn’t a long road from The Hobbit to this one,” Riley told us of the first installment of J.K. Rowlings megahit fantasy series, “I read this book when I was eleven or twelve, the same age Harry is in the story, so I identified with him in a lot of ways.” It’s hard to find a millennial whose childhood was not shaped by the story of a dark-haired, green-eyed wizard who defies the odds and comes into his own power in a world that seemed stacked against him. The fact that even the granddaughter of Elvis harbored fantasies of being the progeny of wizards is all the proof we need that stars really are just like us after all. (For the record: Riley says she would “definitely be Slytherin.”)

East of Eden, by John Steinbeck

Steinbeck’s 1952 masterpiece (and Oprah’s 49th Book Club pick) was among the first literary books that Riley’s father, a “voracious reader, gave her and insisted she read. “I loved East of Eden immediately, with its multigenerational saga I found a lot to relate to,” Riley told us. Set in California’s Salinas Valley, the epic novel follows two entertained families over the years between the American Civil War and the outbreak of World War One as they loosely reenact the Biblical stories of Adam and Eve and, later, of Cain and Abel. But don’t let the religious themes and historical setting fool you, this book is shot through with words of modern relevance…as well as some houses of ill repute.

The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov

Another required reading gifted to Riley by her father, this biting political satire—written under and about Stalin’s regime and published many years after the author’s death—imagines a visit from the devil and his satanic entourage to the (officially atheist) Soviet Union. Blending dark humor, political criticism, magical realism, and Christian philosophy, this book was a bold, underground challenge to Bulgakov’s government—and a literary challenge for Riley when she first received the book. “I must have started Master and Margarita ten times and never got anywhere until one time it just clicked,” she told us, “I aged into it, and it was the first book I was proud to have finished, it inspired my first attempt at writing, which was a screenplay set in Egypt.”

Hopscotch, by Julio Cortázar

“My first deep exposure to the surreal in literature was Cortázar’s short story ‘Axolotl,’ where the narrator slowly transforms into the strange salamander,” Riley told us. “I already loved fantasy,”—an interest no doubt seeded by her early obsession with books like Harry Potter and The Hobbit —”so this gorgeous story didn’t feel like such a far step from that, and it led me to his stunning novel Hopscotch, that plays with the form of the novel itself.” Written in a stream-of-consciousness style, the acclaimed novel centers on a character much like the author at the time of its writing an Argentinian writer living in Paris with his mistress and a ragtag group of bohemian friends. The book’s chapters can be read in two different sequences, either sequentially or by “hopscotching” around as outlined by a “table of instructions.” These two different sequences offer two different accounts of the hero’s international adventures.

Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami

“Surrealism was the first genre where I thought, oh, this is what I really like. So: deeper down the rabbit hole I went,” Riley told us. This “stunning, moving book” follows a Japanese fifteen-year-old runaway named Kafka Tamura, who finds refuge in a dreamy private library. But danger (and magic) soon come knocking. Kafka is soon swept into a hallucinatory adventure featuring a recent murder, and decades-old school field trip disaster, talking cats, a magical entity who takes the form of Colonel Sanders, and a whole lot of wisdom. As with countless other readers, the author’s strange and singular style took immediate hold of Riley who then “proceeded to read a bunch of other Murakami, like The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles and Norwegian Wood.”

Signs, by Laura Lynne Jackson

“It shouldn’t be that surprising that this book about communicating with loved ones who have passed away was one of my mom’s favorites,” Riley acknowledges, “it was a staple in her house, always on the kitchen table.” Written by a famed psychic medium, Signs offers readers a method of recognizing and interpreting signs from the Other Side. Lisa Marie may have inherited this impulse to search for a wider cosmology in books from Elvis himself. “My mom loved to go through her dad’s books to understand him better,” Riley writes in From Here to the Great Unknown, recalling how the Graceland bookshelves spiritual and self-help texts, dutifully annotated in the “King of Rock’s” own script. “He was clearly searching for a deeper comprehension of the world,” writes Riley.

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