Lifestyle

In my library: John Noble

“Fringe” may have ended, but fans of Fox’s quirky sci-fi series won’t soon forget its brilliant (and forgetful) scientist, Walter Bishop — and that goes double for John Noble, the Aussie actor who played him: “Wasn’t that an amazing creation? I couldn’t wish for more!” Noble says his favorite episode was the one titled “Peter,” in which Dr. Bishop crosses over into an alternate universe to rescue his son. “I think it might have been our best episode,” Noble concedes. But TV moved on, and so has he: Last week he realized a lifelong dream when he made his New York stage debut in “The Substance of Fire” at the Second Stage Theatre, in which he plays the head of a publishing house on the verge of bankruptcy.

Here’s what’s in this actor’s library.

The World Until Yesterday

by Jared Diamond

I first came across Diamond’s books in the ’90s. The man’s a polygot — he’s qualified in so many areas, and he’s a brilliant writer. Here he studies primitive societies and shows how they resolve conflicts. His books tell you that we’re not unique, that what happens to us has happened time and time again.

The Future of the Mind

by Michio Kaku

Even though I’m not a scientist by any means, I’ve always been fascinated by theoretical physics, and there’ve been a number of good books lately for laymen like me. This is about neuroscience and the extraordinary advances we’ve made in the last 20 years, through MRI machines. We can find out how thoughts happen, and learn new skills, no matter what our age.

The Son

by Philipp Meyer

We have a daughter who lives in Texas, and this novel is set there. It’s a wonderful domestic story about how that rambling Lone Star State came about, through four generations of a family. What you see is the original drive and strength that started a dynasty and how it gets diluted as time goes by.

The Book of Noble Thoughts

Edited by Louis Untermeyer

My wife, Penny, went to a rare bookstore and found this. Obviously, the title enchanted her, but it’s such a beautiful book . . . As you get older, you get more circumspect. The first page I came to had a poem by Longfellow: “Life is real ! Life is earnest!/ And the grave is not its goal;/ Dust thou art, to dust returnest,/Was not spoken of the soul.”