Monroe’s bookshelf was exceedingly impressive. At the time of her death, she owned more than 400 volumes, including several first editions. Of the thousands of photographs taken of her, she was especially fond of ones that showed her reading. When a director once found her reading R.M. Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, he asked her how she chose it. “[On] nights when I’ve got nothing else to do I go to the Pickwick bookstore on Hollywood Boulevard,” she told him. “And I just open books at random—or when I come to a page or a paragraph I like, I buy that book. So last night I bought this one. Is that wrong?”
