It's hard not to acknowledge the influence the media we consume has on our creative output. Even when we don't see direct threads of thematic or aesthetic coalescence, sometimes the books we read, films we watch, and music we listen to can subtly but irrevocably alter our perceptions, memories and ways of thinking.

It's why we here at RUSSH are so deeply interested in the web of references behind classic works – and, perhaps it's too soon to tell, we'd like to think Olivia Rodrigo's third album You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love is about to be a future classic.

Rodrigo has long held a penchant for reading – and reads as far and wide as Cohen and Didion – so we thought this was an opportunity to dig into her reading pile from the years between Guts and now, while she was pregnant with the idea of You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love. Read on for all the books Rodrigo was reading while making the album (and some she should add to her TBR pile).

1. Simple Passion by Annie Ernaux

Nobel Prize-winning French writer Annie Ernaux was at the top of Rodrigo's book stack while writing You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love – specifically her autobiographical novel Simple Passion. It charts an emotionally draining two-year relationship and works its way around themes of obsession, longing and destructive love.

Rodrigo revealed on Popcast, the New York Times critics’ podcast, that Stupid Song from her new album directly channeled Simple Passion and "that feeling of liking someone so much that you just feel kind of miserable and insane, like a disease you can’t shake."

2. The Flame by Leonard Cohen

In her Vogue 73 Questions interview from mid-2023, Rodrigo said she considered Cohen's poetry an "endless wall of inspiration", and showed off a gifted a copy of Cohen’s posthumous poetry collection, The Flame – a book she came by via a close songwriting friend. Cohen's musings in The Flame reckon with mortality, desire, and spirituality – and Rodrigo has confirmed that it has since become one of her favourite books and a major influence on her songwriting.

3. All Fours by Miranda July

In late 2025, Rodrigo posted a photo of herself to Instagram stories reading All Fours by Miranda July on the beach. The novel was shortlisted for the 2024 National Book Award for Fiction and follows a woman who, after having an extramarital affair during a road trip, has a sexual awakening.

4. The Colour Purple by Alice Walker

In April of 2026, Rodrigo told Dazed that her current read was The Colour Purple by Alice Walker. You may have watched the Oscar-winning film adaptation, but the 1982 novel is just as much of a devastating deep-cut. In it, two African-American sisters living in rural Georgia at the dawn of the 20th century battle against gendered and racialised abuse, and are eventually torn apart. While its themes certainly don't resonate with the album, it does, at least titularly, resonate with Rodrigo's signature hue.

5. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

It's not hard to look at the aesthetic language of music videos like Drop Dead and draw parallels to Sofia Coppola's film adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides’ 1993 novel The Virgin Suicides. Following the tragically short lives of the five Lisbon sisters from perspective of a group of boys, now men, who grew up in the same Michigan neighbourhood, the novel is among Rodrigo's book shelf faves.

6. Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall

There's no denying Rodrigo's feminist spirit – especially when she's penning songs like All-American B*tch or inviting Lily Allen on stage at Glastonbury to perform a rendition of F**k You, aimed at the US Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Back in 2023, she revealed on stage at one of her shows that she'd been reading Mikki Kendall's seminal Hood Feminism (a key work of intersectional feminism published in 2020), calling it "brilliant" and saying she would “highly recommend it."

7. Auguries of Innocence by Patti Smith

In an act that has garnered no greater jealousy, Smith herself gifted this book of her own poetry to Rodrigo while she was recording Guts at New York’s Electric Lady Studios. It included the inscription "To Olivia, may all your days be inspired. Patti."

Other recommended reading...

While we're at it, we thought we'd return the favour and pull a couple of reading picks for Rodrigo. Here, novels that understand obsessive yearning as both devotion and self-destruction, self-sabotaging because of your own insecurities, and renderings of the sad-girl-in-love archetype...

• Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors
• The Woman Destroyed by Simone Beauvouir
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
• Intermezzo by Sally Rooney
• Heart the Lover by Lily King
• The Work by Bri Lee
• Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
• Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton
• M Train by Patti Smith

Feature image via Instagram.