TV’s Top 4 Brooding Bookworms

From loveable serial killers to aliens who enjoy snacking on cats to… whatever Blossom was, the television landscape is flush with eclectic characters. Today we take a moment to celebrate a rarely acclaimed, yet always entertaining breed: bad boy bookworms. Perplexing as they are good-looking, these men transcend normal human conventions and travel to the beat of their own intellectual drums.
If your ideal man is fictional, melodramatic, and capable of quoting F. Scott Fitzgerald while pretending not to care about how the wind is affecting his hair, you’ve clicked the perfect link. Let’s find out which articulate curmudgeons shuffled past the velvet rope into our exclusive “Mount Rushmore of Television Bad Boy Bookworms.”

4. Lucas Scott
Program: One Tree Hill
Bad-boy-to-bookworm ratio: 20%/80%
Notable books read: Winter of Our Discontent, Atlas Shrugged, Julius Caesar, The Great Gatsby
Bad boy tendencies: Shirtlessness, tattoos, brooding, squinting, punching people, cheating on his girlfriend, almost shooting his father
Probable secret guilty pleasure book: The Game
Classic Bad Boy Bookworm: Lucas Scott once made the most attractive girl in school give him an extensive oral report on John Steinbeck’s Winter of Our Discontent before reluctantly agreeing to a date—easily the most nonsensical moment in a television series where kidnapping, murder, and dramatic declarations of love happen on a weekly basis. Well, perhaps the second most nonsensical moment.
3. Jess Mariano
Program: Gilmore Girls
Bad-boy-to-bookworm ratio: 50%/50%
Notable books read: Oliver Twist, Slaughterhouse-Five, On the Road, Ulysses, The Sun Also Rises
Bad boy tendencies: Smoking, conversational malcontentedness, authority issues, fighting, grumpiness, extreme lack of social civility, general surliness
Probable favorite Great Gatsby character: Tom Buchanan
The quintessential “Bad Boy Bookworm” moment is brought to you by Jess Mariano. After borrowing a relative stranger’s copy of Howl and Other Poems, Jess returns the book with his (unsolicited) notes in the margins! Attention, Mr. Mind-Bogglingly Pretentious, your table for two with Ms. Respecting Someone’s Personal Property is ready. If I lend you my Anchorman DVD, don’t record your own commentary track and then add it to the disc. Actually, I’d be okay with that, but the book thing is completely different and a classic Bad Boy Bookworm move.
2. Boyd Crowder

Program: Justified
Bad-boy-to-bookworm ratio: 85%/15%
Notable books read: Of Human Bondage, The Bible
Bad boy tendencies: Casually cool strut, tax evasion, starting a cult, general criminal tomfoolery, habit of being simultaneously engaging and threatening, rebel-rousing, murder
Book he’ll never admit he cried after reading: The Giving Tree
Yes, Boyd is a former racist and current murderer, but nobody’s perfect! I’ve been told I snore; we all have our flaws. In lieu of brooding, Boyd alleviates his inner turmoil by using superior mental acuity to hoodwink his less intellectually competent neighbors out of their money. To quote Matt Damon quoting Canada Bill Jones, “It’s immoral to let a sucker keep his money.”
1. James “Sawyer” Ford
Program: Lost
Bad-boy-to-bookworm ratio: 80%/20%
Notable books read: Of Mice and Men, Watership Down, A Wrinkle in Time, Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret
Bad boy tendencies: Cursing, bullying, flimflamming, doling out admittedly clever nicknames, brooding, shirtlessness, murder
Literary quote: (in reference to Watership Down) “Hell of a book… it’s about bunnies.”
Sure, Sawyer read a lot of books on the island, but did he really comprehend them? Yes, Watership Down is about bunnies, but what about the allegorical symbolism, Sawyer?! In his defense, I don’t believe SparkNotes are available on magical deserted islands… yet. Still, you’re on an island! You have nothing but time. You can delve a little deeper than, “It’s about bunnies”! Sawyer’s ability to effortlessly convert literary knowledge into savvy putdowns is second to none, but his grasp on the subject matter receives a grade of incomplete.
If you’re a burgeoning Bad Boy Bookworm I suggest adding a few of the books mentioned above to your library. They make for an ideal travel companion as you pensively brood near a majestic body of water–or while taking a much-needed break from heroically punching someone’s face in the name of love.