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Capturing the universal

Feature by Alice Cary

Past, present and future collide in glorious ways in these art and photography books, whether it’s a modern photographer witnessing history come alive on Civil War battlefields or a discussion of why the Yellow Brick Road was yellow in The Wizard of Oz.

LIFE LESSONS
When photographer Paul Mobley was working on his book American Farmer, he noticed that many of his subjects were age 100 or more, and was inspired to begin his next project: traveling to all 50 states and photographing at least one centenarian in each. After crisscrossing the country with his wife in an Airstream trailer, Mobley created a lively look at their lives in If I Live to Be 100: The Wisdom of Centenarians. 

His black-and-white portraits reveal plenty of spunk, personality and spirit, while Allison Milionis writes an accompanying profile of each subject. We meet Irving Olson of Tucson, Arizona, who was profiled in Smithsonian magazine at age 98 for his unbelievable photographs of colliding drops of water. Meet Margaret Wachs of Stratford, Connecticut, who swam 10 laps to raise money for her church on her 100th birthday. 

“Along the way,” Mobley notes, “I discovered a treasure trove of ideas and lessons on how we can all live gracefully and with meaning as we travel toward our final sunset.”

MODERN EYEWITNESS
A Civil War enthusiast since his childhood, photographer Michael Falco set out on a four-year, battlefield-to-battlefield odyssey coinciding with the war’s 150th anniversary. The result is the wonderfully haunting Echoes of the Civil War: Capturing Battlefields through a Pinhole Camera. “Soldiers’ journals and memoirs describe the battlefields as dreamlike,” Falco writes, “and that is how they appear through the patient eye of the pinhole camera.”

While exploring major battle sites from Bull Run to Appomattox, Falco became not just a chronicler but a re-enactor himself, dressing in period clothing as he set up his primitive wooden box camera, using modern film but no lens, viewfinder or shutter. Along with these evocative photos, Falco interweaves past and present through his narrative as he “tumbled down the rabbit hole of Civil War history.” Echoes of the Civil War will hold great appeal for history and photography buffs alike. 

DANCERS ON DISPLAY
One day, 12-year-old Sarah asked her photographer parents, Ken Browar and Deborah Ory, for pictures of her favorite dancers for her bedroom walls. They could find images of famous dancers of the past, but few, if any, of current stars. The couple rectified the situation through the NYC Dance Project, photographing a variety of dancers in the loft studio space of their Brooklyn home.

The Art of Movement is the spectacular result, a large book filled with arresting images of more than 70 dancers from companies that include the American Ballet Theatre, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the Royal Danish Ballet and London’s Royal Ballet.

As Ohry writes: “The images focus on capturing emotion through movement, which at the core is what I feel dance is about: it’s a language that is spoken through movement.” And what movements they are, as dancers soar through the air, draped in colorful costumes or couture clothing. Browar and Ory capture the rare blend of athleticism and grace in dancers like Misty Copeland, Bill T. Jones, Xin Ying and Robert Fairchild as they transform their bodies into art.

WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS
In A History of Pictures, renowned British artist David Hockney and art critic Martin Gayford explore a sweeping variety of pictures, including those on canvas, paper, cinema screens and even smartphones, showing how our ongoing artistic narrative “is still unfolding.” The result is a lively, dynamic conversation between Hockney and Gayford, written in alternating commentary. Pages juxtapose, for example, a Titian portrait of Mary Magdalene with a film still of Ingrid Berman in Casablanca, or Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe images with a Manet painting. In a chapter on “Movies and Stills,” they show how the Bates Motel in Psycho was based on Edward Hopper’s painting “House by the Railroad.” (As for the aforementioned Yellow Brick Road, it’s because early Technicolor was good with yellow.)

This book is an unexpected delight.

BRING ON THE BUNNIES
Brimming with over 200 photographs, paintings and sketches, The Art of Beatrix Potter provides an in-depth look at the creative process of one of the world’s enduringly beloved storytellers, published to coincide with the 150th anniversary of her birth. Organized geographically by writer and image researcher Emily Zach, this volume explores how different places Potter lived affected not only her life but also her art, beginning with a London schoolroom filled with rabbits, mice, bats, guinea pigs and hedgehogs. A natural scientist at heart as well as a gifted observer, Potter became fascinated by a variety of things she encountered, such as fungi and their colors. Readers see examples of the “picture letters” that Potter wrote to friends that inspired The Tale of Peter Rabbit and the many books that followed. 

Lovers of art and children’s literature will get lost in this intriguing compilation of a lifetime of art.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Past, present and future collide in glorious ways in these art and photography books, whether it’s a modern photographer witnessing history come alive on Civil War battlefields or a discussion of why the Yellow Brick Road was yellow in The Wizard of Oz.
NonfictionLiterature

Holiday must-haves for literature lovers

Feature by Julie Hale

If you’re shopping for someone who’s happiest in the company of a book, then these recommendations are for you! Bibliophiles will delight over the goodies we’ve gathered this holiday season.

LOST LANGUAGE
First up is a story of cinematic proportions: An ancient codex, written by an unidentified author in a hand no one can decipher, flits in and out of history, confounding researchers across the centuries. The codex in question, known as the Voynich Manuscript, is one of literature’s great enigmas. The work dates back to the 15th century, and what’s known about its past is piecemeal. After passing through the hands of various owners, it surfaced in a book sale in Rome in 1903. Nine years later, it came into the possession of Polish antiquarian Wilfrid Voynich. Today it’s housed at Yale University.

Readers everywhere can now puzzle over this archival oddity thanks to a magnificent new facsimile edition created from fresh photographs of the original. The Voynich Manuscript includes the full text of the codex, as well as reproductions of its arcane illustrations. Edited by rare books expert Raymond Clemens, the volume features essays on the background of the manuscript and the latest research connected to it—efforts that have produced few clues about its provenance. A strange yet sublime work, The Voynich Manuscript is a jewel for the literary enthusiast and a prize for any personal library. 

MINDING THE STORE
For book lovers, nothing beats a few hours of browsing in a well-stocked bookshop. New Yorker illustrator Bob Eckstein celebrates the singular joys of perusal and possible purchase in Footnotes from the World’s Greatest Bookstores, an international tour of 75 indie bookshops that includes literary institutions such as City Lights (San Francisco) and Shakespeare and Company (Paris). Eckstein captures the essence of each shop in his luminous illustrations and shares stories from the stacks.

The destinations are worthy of a bibliophile’s bucket list, like Word on the Water, a London bookstore located on a floating barge, and Librairie Avant-Garde, an underground book emporium in a former bomb shelter in Nanjing, China, with 43,000 square feet of browsing space. A foreword by Garrison Keillor and quotes from Alice Munro, Robin Williams, Patti Smith and other notables make this the ultimate valentine to the brick-and-mortar bookstore. 

THE WRITING LIFE

Getting writers to interview other writers is a long-held practice at Vanity Fair that has resulted in classic contributions to the magazine. The best of these literary pairings appear in the lively new anthology Vanity Fair’s Writers on Writers. Assembled by Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, these 43 pieces are filled with the larger-than-life reportage and sophisticated criticism that have made the publication famous.

In “Mississippi Queen,” Willie Morris goes for a drive with Eudora Welty—“quite simply,” he says, “the funniest person I’ve ever known.” In “The White Stuff,” Michael Lewis pays a call on Tom Wolfe in his Hamptons home, finding the great writer turned out in (you guessed it) a white suit and matching fedora. When it comes to author appraisals, the collection’s lineup of matches is remarkable: James Wolcott tackles Jack Kerouac, Martin Amis assesses Saul Bellow, Jacqueline Woodson honors James Baldwin—and that’s just a preview. In his introduction to the collection, fellow editor David Friend writes, “the life of every storyteller brims with revelatory tales.” So does this terrific anthology. 

FICTIONAL WORLDS
Like a brave heroine or stalwart adventurer, setting takes a leading role in many a beloved literary work. Middle-earth, Oz and Narnia are fully realized worlds that readers can map with their imaginations. These and other sensational sites are celebrated in Literary Wonderlands, an unforgettable expedition to 90-plus places made famous in fiction and poetry. 

Edited by Slate columnist Laura Miller, Wonderlands tracks almost 4,000 years of narrative. Starting with lands brought to life in time-honored tales like The Odyssey and The Tempest, the volume moves forward to explore 20th-century favorites (Fahrenheit 451, Slaughterhouse-Five) and up-to-date offerings (The Hunger Games, 1Q84). Author biographies, background on the creation of each work and a wealth of visuals complete this standout tribute to stories that transport the reader. Isn’t that what fiction’s for?

A BOOK CLUB’S BEST FRIEND
Is your book group in need of a boost? This holiday, surprise the members of your circle with A Year of Reading and get set for inspired discussions in 2017. Amply qualified authors Elisabeth Ellington (Ph.D., British lit) and Jane Freimiller (Ph.D., philosophy) share creative ideas for a year’s worth of reading in this handy guide.

In a month-by-month format, the book offers reading recommendations tailored to each season. Ideas for February range from the new to the tried-and-true: Aziz Ansari’s Modern Romance; Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. For November, there’s a bounty of food-related reading, including Lucy Knisley’s Relish, a culinary memoir told in graphic-novel form. Along with out-of-the-ordinary selections, the guide provides talking points that can kickstart a conversation and questions to keep the dialogue alive. With tips on how to organize a new reading group and resources for researching titles, this manual is a must for book-clubbers.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

If you’re shopping for someone who’s happiest in the company of a book, then these recommendations are for you! Bibliophiles will delight over the goodies we’ve gathered this holiday season.
FictionLiterature

Celebrating National Poetry Month

Feature by Charles Wyrick

In his introduction to Three Centuries of American Poetry: 1623-1923, editor Robert D. Richardson, Jr., cuts straight to the chase in order to defray any criticism that this new anthology of poets is just another lump in the already overstuffed shirt of the Western canon. To quote Richardson, "There ain't no canon. There ain't going to be any canon. There never has been a canon. That's the canon." Though Richardson's collection doesn't totally debunk literary tradition, it does attempt to widen perceptions about poetry and literature in general. Rather than posing as a who's who of American poetry, Richardson and co-editor Allen Mandlebaum explore poetry's various forms. Their refreshing approach emphasizes diversity and invention. The collection places anonymous hymns and spirituals side by side with the big names in American literature. In the end, what Three Centuries of American Poetry reminds us is that poetry is a fluid form. A canon is a standard, a fixed point by which measurements are drawn; in short, canons are static. Poetry is ever-changing. Richardson and Mandlebaum's vision treats poetry as part of a grand continuum. In the spirit of this celebration of verse, here's a brief look at four poets writing today who excite us with their unique creations.

Those who known Michael Ondaatje as author of the bestselling novel The English Patient might be surprised to find out that Ondaatje is an also an accomplished poet. His new book entitled Handwriting deals with the imprints or impressions humans make on the natural world. Writing beautifully about his native country of Sri Lanka, Ondaatje's poems take us in and out of the teeming jungles that form such an important part of his country's character. But Ondaatje is not what one would call a nature poet. His interest lies more in watching humans struggling against greater forces. In Buried Ondaatje follows a bronze buddha as it is taken from a temple into the jungle to be hidden from thieves during war. Through minimal line construction he builds a remarkably lyrical description that intertwines religion and myth into his characters' encounters with the lush yet unforgiving landscape. Here individuals struggle under religious law and natural law as the poem reveals its complex and haunting portrayal of the immutable spirit of humanity and the indomitable power of nature.

Like Ondaatje, Philip Levine builds grandiloquent portraits out of regional materials. Instead of bejeweled buddhas, Levine deals in slag heaps, sliding garage doors, poolhalls, and parking lots. Writing about the industry-worn landscape of Michigan in The Mercy, Levine finds inspiration in industrial images. In the poem Drum, oil barrels and trash mounds transform into the sleeping forms of "A Carthaginian outpost sent/ to guard the waters of the west." Here and elsewhere Levine makes imaginative discoveries out of his surroundings. In forgotten refuse, Levine sees an ancient army. Throughout his new collection discoveries such as these are made. Yet Levine's great gift as a poet lies not only in his keen eye for catching surprising associations, but in his compassion. Levine's poems will dovetail from imaginative daydreams into powerful meditations that explore suffering, time, and transcendence. Through a hard-won alchemy that sets life against industry, humans versus machines, Levine addresses hopes, aspirations, and desires. More than a poet of things, he is a poets of beings, a chronicler of individuals and families whose lives are tied to a land of machines. All of the poems that comprise The Mercy involve us in Levine's understanding of not only the details of labor but the lives hidden deep within industry's shadows.

Unlike Ondaatje and Levine's somewhat geocentric work, Louise Gluck's new book Vita Nova focuses on less easily identifiable terrain. In the collection's title poem, Gluck coolly relays the particulars of a dream. Gluck often uses abstract concepts for launching the themes in her work, choosing dreams, memories, myths, or philosophical conundrums as keys to her poetic explorations. Vita Nova's recurring theme is grief. The poems in her book repeatedly express the sorrow of losing a loved one. Through her artistry Gluck seeks to position her grief in relation to herself and to the other forces that shape her life. Yet balancing sorrow with life doesn't make poetry. What carries the book is Gluck's voice. Using a verse form of her own invention, she manages to sound both elegant and informal in her maneuvers with and around her sorrow. Her writing style invokes a grave tone that sounds graceful and profound even when syntax belays informality. Gluck is a true master of her language in the manner by which she draws her life-learned themes out of the carefully staged, elegant yet powerful lines of her art.

Like Gluck, Rita Dove, the greatly heralded former Poet Laureate of the United States, is less a poet of place and more an archaeologist of the self. Yet unlike Gluck, Dove's sense of self is closely interwoven with her deeply felt pride in race. Several poems in her new collection On the Bus with Rosa Parks find her telling tales of women who fought for racial equality through peaceful action in their everyday lives. In Rosa a short, quiet, and beautiful homage Dove honors the power of Rosa Parks's political action by matching the simplicity and dignity of Parks's protest with a simple, memorable poem. Doing nothing was the doing Dove says of Parks, and this beautiful line both encapsulates and honors Parks's courageous action. The subtle lyrical strength of this powerful poem testifies not only to Rosa Parks but to Rita Dove and the power her words will have over generations to come.

Whether addressing a place or a feeling, private or political action, poetry lives through individuals and their voices. So forget the Western canon and try out some new poetry this spring. Maybe April will turn out better than predicted.

In his introduction to Three Centuries of American Poetry: 1623-1923, editor Robert D. Richardson, Jr., cuts straight to the chase in order to defray any criticism that this new anthology of poets is just another lump in the already overstuffed shirt of the Western canon.…

NonfictionPhotographyLiterature

Gifts for feminists: Heroines of the world

Feature by Cat Acree

The perfect gifts for nasty women, persisters and resisters, these three books celebrate the power and magic of women.

HEROINES IN THEIR OWN WORDS
Open to any page of 200 Women Who Will Change the Way You See the World and you’ll find a new role model. You’ve likely heard of many of the women included—Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Bobbi Brown—but many will be new faces, from humanitarian advocates to innovators and religious leaders. No woman falls into just one category, but they can all be labeled as brilliant.

For this series, 200 women from all over the world were asked the five same questions: What really matters to you? What brings you happiness? What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? What would you change if you could? And which single word do you most identify with? Their answers, if considered all at once, are nearly overwhelming for the vast inspiration they provide. But taken one at a time, they reveal each woman’s own story, in her own words—a precious thing indeed.

Margaret Atwood’s favorite word is “and” (“It means there is always something more.”), while Marama Fox, representative and co-leader of the Māori Party in New Zealand, identifies with the word “whanaungatanga”: “It is the idea that each of us needs each other and that there is none greater or lesser than another.” Author Isabel Allende shares the heartbreaking story of her daughter’s death and the harrowing process of transporting her from Madrid to the United States: “I learned the lesson that I am not in control. People have this idea that we come to the world to acquire things—love, fame, goods, whatever. In fact, we come to this world to lose everything. When we go, we have nothing and we can take nothing with us.” Actor Embeth Davidtz discusses showing her breast cancer scar on television: “I had never thought of myself as ugly after breast cancer, which is why it was so important to me to convey a confidant, well-put-together woman in a sexual light—to not have her scar dictate that she was less of a woman.”

Smart women, big dreamers and anyone who wants to make the world a better place will find countless new heroines here.

YOUR SISTER, YOUR NEIGHBOR
If 200 Women is about the minds of women—their wisdom, brilliance and resilience—then The Atlas of Beauty: Women of the World in 500 Portraits is about their appearances. What is beauty, if women could define it for themselves? In these portraits of women from more than 50 countries, all captured by Mihaela Noroc, a photographer who has been traveling the globe since 2013, it becomes clear that beauty is in our differences. Page after page, we see women who are normal, real and utterly beautiful. The effect is kaleidoscopic—like holding a small piece of the world up to the light, and seeing all the races, nationalities, colors, sizes, styles and lives within.

Some portraits are paired with brief captions; some women are quoted; others might be noted only by the location. Portraits are often grouped by similarities, from poses to activities; activists in protests and rallies from New York, Greece and Turkey share a spread, as do women in traditional dress from Romania, Ecuador and North Korea.

If one thing unites all these different women, it is the lights in their eyes, and each page builds a sense of togetherness that needs no explanation.

THE POWER OF THE WITCH
Is there any greater magic than a good book? I think not, and if you agree (you should), you might love the idea that women writers are a lot like witches. “Witches and women writers alike dwell in creativity, mystery, and other worlds,” writes Taisia Kitaiskaia in Literary Witches: A Celebration of Magical Women Writers. “They aren’t afraid to be alone in the woods of their imaginations, or to live in huts of their own making. They’re not afraid of the dark.” Kitaiskaia has transformed 30 diverse writers into literary witches, from Emily Brontë to Zora Neale Hurston. Each woman has a two-page spread featuring a portrait (often styled as folk art or a religious icon) by Katy Horan and a list of recommended reading, a brief biography—and a fantastical description of the author as a witch.

Many are benevolent witches: Toni Morrison, “queen of miracles, generations, and memory,” can see a person’s ancestral pain in their skin and ferries ghosts across rivers. Audre Lorde, “warrior witch of otherness, bodies electric, and sisterhood,” is a goddess rising from a pond of lava, and women who approach are dipped in gold. Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad, “rebel of sensual love, green gardens, and perfume,” becomes an acacia tree whose naked spirit brings life to parched land. Others are full of rage and revenge: Sylvia Plath, “fury of motherhood, marriage, and the moon,” exists in three forms, one of which dismembers male mannequins.

There’s something intoxicating about imagining your favorite female writers as having spiritual powers. These women are magic—and so are you.

The perfect gifts for nasty women, persisters and resisters, these three books celebrate the power and magic of women.

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For library dwellers and book hoarders

Feature by Julie Hale

The shelves are brimming with extra-special titles for bibliophiles. If there’s a discerning reader on your gift list, check out our must-have recommendations below. Here’s to a very literary holiday!

Poets and novelists can be solitary souls, but as Alison Nastasi reveals in Writers and Their Cats, they often have a rare appreciation for pets, especially of the feline variety. Featuring photos of 45 famous authors and their cat sidekicks, Nastasi’s purrrfectly charming book is filled with surprises, including a picture of a kitten-covered Stephen King. Sensational shots capture Alice Walker, Neil Gaiman, Gillian Flynn, Haruki Murakami and other beloved authors with cats at writing desks, in libraries and cozied up on sofas.

For the writer, what’s the allure of le chat? According to Nastasi, “The cat represents traits most appealing to the creative personality—qualities like mystery, cleverness, fearlessness, unpredictability, and sensuality.” Her book is catnip for literature lovers and an extraordinary celebration of kindred spirits.

© Underwood & Underwood / New York Times. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons. From Writers and Their Cats by Alison Nastasi, published by Chronicle.

 

RA-RA-RUSSIAN LIT
Author Viv Groskop takes heart from the tales of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Pushkin in The Anna Karenina Fix: Life Lessons from Russian Literature and looks at the morals and messages that can be gleaned from the masters’ works. With insight and humor, she examines 11 books and plays, revealing how her own experiences have been informed by timeless titles such as Dr. Zhivago, The Master and Margarita and War and Peace.

By chronicling the heartaches, dramas and hardships of daily existence, Russian literature can provide solace to the reader who seeks it. If you’re enmeshed in an ill-fated romance, Groskop prescribes A Month in the Country. Tormented by inner conflict? Pick up Crime and Punishment. Stories, Groskop says, “are as good at showing us how not to live as they are at showing us how to live.” Read and heed.

BOOK LOVER’S BOUNTY
An delightful compendium of literature-related history and trivia, Jane Mount’s Bibliophile: An Illustrated Miscellany is one of the season’s standout gift selections. In this splendid treasury, Mount explores literary genres and shares the reading recommendations of librarians and booksellers from across the country. She also presents nifty lists of literature-based enterprises, like blockbuster book-into-movie projects (Emma, The Shining) and famous songs inspired by great books (Bowie’s “1984,” Springsteen’s “The Ghost of Tom Joad”).

An avid reader since childhood, Mount has been painting what she calls Ideal Bookshelves, renderings of fellow bibliophiles’ favorite books, since 2008. Readers will enjoy perusing the colorfully illustrated, artfully assembled stacks that have become Mount’s trademark. Her artistic talents are on full display here in enchanting illustrations of meticulously detailed spines, book jackets, authors and notable libraries and bookstores.

Bibliophile is bliss for the book lover, from cover to cover.

LITERARY LIVING
Susan Harlan explores the estates, castles and cottages that appear in classic works of fiction in Decorating a Room of One’s Own: Conversations on Interior Design with Miss Havisham, Jane Eyre, Victor Frankenstein, Elizabeth Bennet, Ishmael, and Other Literary Notables. Harlan, who teaches English literature at Wake Forest University, brings scholarly expertise and epigrammatic wit to this guide to famous fictional figures’ digs.

Casting the literary hero as homeowner, the book features Apartment Therapy-style interviews with a wide cast of characters who expound upon design ideas and DIY projects. There’s plenty of decorating advice on offer: “If you own an abbey, don’t feel obligated to adopt an overly monastic style,” Emma’s Mr. Knightley counsels. “That would be badly done indeed!” From opulent (Pride and Prejudice’s Pemberley) to plainspoken (the March home in Little Women) to utterly inhospitable (Castle Dracula), the residences in this delightful volume run the gamut. Becca Stadtlander’s dainty illustrations make this a tour that readers will want to take again and again.

GALLERY OF GREATS
Growing up, photographer Beowulf Sheehan took refuge in books, and he pairs his twin passions to perfection in Author: The Portraits of Beowulf Sheehan, a gallery of 200 acclaimed contemporary writers, from Margaret Atwood to Colson Whitehead. Sheehan took his first author portraits in 2005 at the PEN World Voices Festival; by 2017, he’d photographed around 700 writers. His photos capture the idiosyncrasies and moods of each of his subjects, whether it’s a brooding Karl Ove Knausgaard or a radiant Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. In the book’s introduction, he shares on-the-job anecdotes involving the likes of Donna Tartt, Chinua Achebe and Umberto Eco. With a foreword by Salman Rushdie, this revelatory volume will bring a sparkle to any bibliophile’s holiday.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The shelves are brimming with extra-special titles for bibliophiles. If there’s a discerning reader on your gift list, check out our must-have recommendations below. Here’s to a very literary holiday!

NonfictionPop CultureLiterature

Geektastic gifts

Feature by Chris Pickens

Being a nerd has never been as cool as it is right now. Every second movie is a comic book adaptation, and celebrities admit publicly how much they’ve always loved Dungeons & Dragons.

As great as this new age is for us (yes, I count myself among this group), it can mean weeding through mountains of nerdy products to find good presents to give to your fellow dweebs. Look no further, true believers! A pair of books is here to save the day.

In Alec Nevala-Lee’s dynamic literary history, Astounding, John Campbell finds himself in the right place at the right time. A longtime contributor to the magazine Astounding Stories, he was named editor at just 27 years of age, beginning an incredible 40-year career collaborating, mentoring and stewarding some of the most famous sci-fi writers in history. The writings of Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and Scientology’s L. Ron Hubbard directly or indirectly addressed America’s experience during World War II, the dawn of the Cold War and the advancement of digital technology. Brought together through Campbell’s magazine, these authors shaped what we now think of as the golden age of science fiction.

At no point does Astounding become stale or detached—each character is distinct, rendered with care and fidelity as their stories unfold. That said, Nevala-Lee is happy to point out his subjects’ missteps, weaknesses and, in the case of Hubbard, their outright lies. Some of the funniest passages involve Hubbard’s continued failed attempts to become a captain in the Navy, finally succeeding only to be removed from service due to ineptitude. Even a reader unfamiliar with sci-fi can get behind this poignant, funny and revelatory look at a group of iconic writers.

Jon Morris’ The League of Regrettable Sidekicks is full of a warmth all its own. A cross between a coffee table book and a nightstand page-turner, it is as singular a reading experience as its predecessor, The Legion of Regrettable Supervillains. Where that book focused on the misguided bad guys that have graced the pages of comics, here readers get to relive some of the forgotten foils to the heroes we know and love. Who could forget Fatman, Unggh or Superman Jr.? That’s the best part: Most of us have. Accompanying each sidekick is an informational summary, including who created the character, when he or she debuted and with whom he or she is primarily associated. In addition, we get hundreds of images of these hopeless saps.

This snarky, vividly illustrated ride through comic book history is a hoot. However, there is some real substance here, particularly for uberfans of comic books. Sidekicks provides a good amount of context about the time or place the sidekick appears, and many will be delighted to see where these characters fit into the overall timeline of the genre. And digging for Morris’ many jokes (he categorizes the three Lieutenant Marvels as “triply redundant”) will have you coming back to this title for years.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Being a nerd has never been as cool as it is right now. Every second movie is a comic book adaptation, and celebrities admit publicly how much they’ve always loved Dungeons & Dragons.

NonfictionLiteratureFood & Drink

A toast to good tidings and holiday cheer

Feature by Eve Zibart

When it comes to this year’s wine and spirits books, everything old is new again, retasted and retold. After all, there are few subjects with more history behind them than booze. These five books touch on nostalgic and historic high points with some odd and entertaining side trips into potions, pot stills and poetry.

Blotto Botany: A Lesson in Healing Cordials and Plant Magic by herbalist and blogger Spencre L.R. McGowan is a sweet-natured throwback—a hippie-dipso catalog of restorative concoctions and medicinal cordials. These 40 recipes are sorted by season and include handy plant facts and trivia. Homebrewing with botanicals requires real dedication and may necessitate some specialty shopping, but luckily, McGowan’s colorful, collage-filled book with handwritten notes is a refreshing tonic itself. Recipes include a lilac-infused wine with the optional addition of rose quartz, an elderberry brew and various syrups, tonics and infused waters. Here’s a holiday tidbit for our toasters: Amethyst got its name, which essentially means “sober” in ancient Greek, because its winelike color was thought to counter alcohol. Good luck with that, merrymakers!

EDIT SOBER
A Sidecar Named Desire: Great Writers and the Booze That Stirred Them by artists Greg Clarke and Monte Beauchamp is a sort of Bartlett’s of imbibing anecdotes and illustrations, mixing tales of the great and powerful word wizards—F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner and Truman Capote, Edgar Allan Poe and Oscar Wilde, Dorothy Parker and Charles Baudelaire and more—with recaps of the evolution of the great spirits and a dash of recipes. Hemingway claimed to have popularized two cocktails—the Bloody Mary (probably not) and the Papa Doble (perhaps)—but then, he was always something of a braggart. Many of these inebriated authors created surrogate characters whose habits they knew all too well, and for whatever reason, guzzling gumshoes and sipping spies were a popular conduit—think Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade and, of course, James Bond. This is an entertaining little book for those whose love of literature is paired with a love of elicit elixirs.

PUB TALK
In Drink Beer, Think Beer: Getting to the Bottom of Every Pint, longtime beer critic John Holl evocatively writes, “I once had a beer made with caramel malts and almond extract that reminded me of the cookies served by our local Chinese restaurant after dinner. It had been years since I’d eaten that dessert, and the taste of the beer took me down an unexpected memory lane of family gatherings.” Holl goes on to fearlessly debunk beer snobbism, pointing out that the pumpkin-spice craze (love it or loathe it) followed the long custom of autumnal pumpkin beers, not the other way around. Despite the traditional admonition “beer before wine, mighty fine, beer after whiskey, mighty risky,” Holl embraces “cross-drinking,” by which he means dabbling in beer, wine and even cocktails in order to enjoy their various virtues. But be warned, Holl is a pro—not everyone should try this drinking style at home. Inspired by the BBC’s “Sherlock” and Holmes’ description of a “mind palace,” Holl suggests a “mind pub” to help you identify and remember the characteristics of beers you like.

SIP UP TO THE BAR
Single Malt: A Guide to the Whiskies of Scotland by Clay Risen is perhaps the most serious-minded book in the gift bag. The follow-up to his bestselling American Whiskey, Bourbon & Rye, Risen’s beautifully illustrated book pays homage to the flavors, aromas and aging of 330 bottlings from more than 100 fine Scottish single malt whisky distilleries. (For those a little confused by spellings, “whisky” without the “e” is how Scottish, Japanese and Canadian spirits are spelled; Irish and American whiskies, including bourbon and rye whiskey, use the extra vowel. Perhaps we need the oxygen.) Risen is an editor at the New York Times, and his book’s introductory material on the brewing, fermentation, blending and barreling of Scotch whisky is clear and blessedly short on jargon. His equally brief and unpretentious explanation of Scotch whisky’s history—especially the market balloons and busts, reform movements and wartime strictures—is sharp and instructive, and his descriptions of labels, flavors and more are insightful and concise.

FINE VINTAGE
The delightful Wine Reads: A Literary Anthology of Wine Writing is an anthology of short pieces, both fiction and nonfiction, about discovering, delving into and debauching on wine. Bestselling novelist and wine columnist Jay McInerney (who includes an article of his own in the book, a Tom Wolfe-ish nip at “Billionaire Winos” that begs for a film adaptation featuring Leonardo DiCaprio) has assembled more than two dozen stories that are worth reading for pleasure, presumably with a glass in hand. Some of these pieces and persons are delicious to rediscover: the original wine critic, George Saintsbury, author of the 1920 Notes on a Cellar-Book, who dissed tasting notes as “wine slang”; a chapter from Rex Pickett’s novel Sideways, which was adapted into a film that gave pinot noir a boost and merlot the boot; “Taste,” a classic Roald Dahl story written for The New Yorker; and so on. A bit of synchronicity: Both “Taste” and McInerney are mentioned in A Sidecar Named Desire.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

When it comes to this year’s wine and spirits books, everything old is new again, retasted and retold. After all, there are few subjects with more history behind them than booze. These five books touch on nostalgic and historic high points with some odd and entertaining side trips into potions, pot stills and poetry.

NonfictionChildren's & YALiterature

Put the world in their hands

Feature by Alice Cary

Give these gifts, and see young readers’ faces fill with glee. Below, find six picks that encourage hands-on learning, stereotype-free thinking, the power of imagination and more.

Calling all Indiana Jones wannabes: Now there’s a kids’ version of Atlas Obscura, The Atlas Obscura Explorer’s Guide for the World’s Most Adventurous Kid, which highlights 100 jaw-dropping places to visit around the globe. Authors Dylan Thuras and Rosemary Mosco chronicle sites like Antarctica’s Blood Falls, an underground town in China built by Mao Tse-tung in the 1960s as a military bunker in case of nuclear attack, a small island in Brazil that’s home to between 2,000 and 4,000 golden lancehead snakes, and the world’s largest model-train setup in Hamburg, Germany. This lively, large-format guide brims with colorful illustrations by Joy Ang, maps and all sorts of geographical excitement.

THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD
Children who love to build and create will enjoy Discovery Globe, a step-by-step build-your-own spinning globe kit. With slotted cardboard pieces, wooden dowels and plastic connectors, there’s no glue required here, and once assembled, young builders can spin their globes while paging through the accompanying World Explorer’s Guide (written by Leon Gray), which is filled with fun facts, a glossary, colorful illustrations from Sarah Edmonds and trivia questions for young globe-trotters.

A DINOSAUR DELIGHT
Learning cool facts about dinosaurs is more fun with Build Your Own Dinosaur Museum. Inside is a “crate” of five fossil exhibits waiting to be unpacked and matched with the correct exhibition. Pretend paleontologists must assemble the color-coded dinosaur fossil pop-ups by slotting the pieces together (again, no glue) and inserting the finished skeletons right into the pages of this fun, fact-filled book, which looks like the museum of a young dinosaur lover’s dreams.

A DAILY DOSE OF VERSE
While Sing a Song of Seasons: A Nature Poem for Each Day of the Year is a weighty tome, it’s filled with a wonderful variety of short poems selected by Fiona Waters, making each day’s read a welcome treat. With beloved poems from the likes of Robert Frost (“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” makes a pitch-perfect appearance in January) and less familiar gems like a translated Mescalero Apache song, this is a celebration of all sorts of weather and its impact on the lives that dwell in biomes such as oceans and forests. Frann Preston-Gannon’s big, bold and colorful mixed-media illustrations are what truly give this collection its wow factor. Readers will be drawn right in, whether they’re poring over a wild ocean storm in April or a brightly blazing November fire. In the introduction, Nosy Crow publisher Kate Wilson explains that this project grew out of her desire to re-create her own favorite childhood book, which caused her to fall “in love with poetry, with rhyme, with rhythm, with the way that poetry squashed big feelings, big thoughts, big things, into tiny boxes of brilliance for the reader to unpack.” Sing a Song of Seasons makes a great read-aloud as well as an enticing treasury for older children.

Illustration from Power to the Princess © 2018 by Julia Bereciartu. Reproduced by permission of Lincoln Children's Books.

 

PROJECT PRINCESS
There’s good reason to be a princess if you’re reading Power to the Princess, written by Vita Murrow and illustrated by Julia Bereciartu. Cast away the old stereotypes, and make room for these smart, independent heroines who span the globe, many of them young women of color. Little Red Riding Hood saves her grandmother and helps relocate those hangry wolves, while Rapunzel becomes a creative architect at her firm, A Braid Above, and designs buildings that people like blind Prince Gothel can navigate. While the social consciousness in these stories can be a bit excessive, they’re an overdue antidote to those outdated princess roles of yore.

MOWGLI RETURNS
Billed as a companion to Rudyard Kipling’s classic novel The Jungle Book, Into the Jungle: Stories for Mowgli contains five original stories about Mowgli, Baloo, Kaa and more. Rest assured, this ain’t your Disney Jungle Book, and these tales have a more modern, enlightened outlook as well. They’re created by award-winning children’s writer Katherine Rundell, who spent her childhood in Africa and Europe and whose prose is exciting and exquisite. Icelandic artist Kristjana S. Williams’ plentiful illustrations are colorful collages created with Victorian engravings. A cloth ribbon bookmark takes the appeal of this gorgeous volume over the top.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Give these gifts, and see young readers’ faces fill with glee. Below, find six picks that encourage hands-on learning, stereotype-free thinking, the power of imagination and more.

NonfictionLiteratureBlack History

You will know us by the strength of our voices

Feature by Vanessa Willoughby

Black history is so much more than the collective memory of trauma. It would be fundamentally wrong, if not outright degrading, to conclude that that the identities of black men and women are simply limited to their resilience. These four books showcase the rich spectrum of black identity.

The sacrifices that black women make in order to practice resistance and seek social and political freedom are too often diminished by the expectation of selfless service. However, in DaMaris B. Hill’s poetry collection A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing: The Incarceration of African American Women from Harriet Tubman to Sandra Bland, she utilizes the powerful narratives of black women from history such as Harriet Tubman and Fannie Lou Hamer, alongside rarely celebrated figures relegated to the shadows, to give these women a chance to exist beyond the roles of activist or martyr.  By utilizing biographical research and black-and-white archival photos, in conjunction with her verse, Hill creates an intimate atmosphere that allows for a rich exploration of fully formed heroines. Hill recognizes that these women don’t have to be perfect representations of freedom fighters in order to garner respect, sympathy and admiration. While racism and bigotry may have bound these women physically, mentally and/or emotionally, their narratives are not bound by struggle. For Hill, these women are not anyone’s mules: They are soothsayers, truth-tellers, mavericks and revolutionaries.

For author, professor and acclaimed academic Emily Bernard, facing adversities as a black woman in America has spawned the invaluable and hard-won ability to take control of her own narrative. Black Is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time, and Mine consists of 12 personal essays brimming with equal parts hope and fury, joy and pain. Whether exploring the delicate dynamics of her interracial marriage, the haunting memory of being stabbed by a white man while she was a graduate student at Yale or the process of adopting her twin daughters from Ethiopia, Bernard’s writing is intimate, honest and unafraid of diving into gray areas. Although society at large may deem the black body—and by extension, blackness—as synonymous with suffering, Bernard’s collection doesn’t shy away from the fact that sometimes scars are proof of life beyond the state of survival.

The official start of the civil rights movement is often linked to the day that Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat and move to the back of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Yet in Unexampled Courage: The Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring, U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel highlights a horrifying case of racial violence and brutality that propelled President Truman to directly address civil rights issues, namely the violence facing black veterans returning from World War II. On February 12, 1946, decorated black veteran Sgt. Isaac Woodard was on his way home to South Carolina via a Greyhound bus. Following a disagreement with the bus driver, Woodard was removed from the bus in Batesburg, South Carolina, by the town’s two-man police unit. Without allowing Woodward to finish explaining his side of the events, Chief Lynwood Shull struck Woodard in the head with his police baton, placed the veteran under arrest, repeatedly beat him to the point of unconsciousness and left him in a county jail cell overnight. Woodard was beaten so severely that the violence resulted in permanent blindness. Gergel’s reconstruction of this moment in history is both enraging and heartbreaking. With a clear-eyed view of the ripple effect of shocking acts of violence, Gergel traces how the blinding of Woodard ignited black communities, the NAACP and sympathetic allies to seek justice and demand that Truman take action. Combining research and a deep knowledge of the country’s legal system, Gergel exposes America’s longstanding legacy of brutalizing black bodies to preserve a vision of America fueled by the destructive force of white supremacy.

Despite their scars, not all historical heroines should be considered tragic figures. For black women at the turn of the 20th century, their struggles involved indignities faced not only because of the color of their skin but also because of their gender. Yet the double-edged sword of being both black and female couldn’t keep some women from pursuing self-autonomy and self-governance, as chronicled in Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval. Guggenheim fellow, author and Columbia University professor Saidiya Hartman sheds light on women who refused to conform to societal bonds and malicious institutions that were determined to keep them downtrodden, enslaved and hopeless. For Hartman, the purpose of this meticulously researched collection is not to wallow in despair, but to celebrate and lift up the plethora of black women who are largely absent from history books. Hartman argues that by rejecting the expectations of their gender and race, these women are unrecognized revolutionaries who were committed to self-discovery in spite of the obstacles obstructing their paths.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Emily Bernard for Black Is the Body.

This article was originally published in the February 2019 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Black history is so much more than the collective memory of trauma. It would be fundamentally wrong, if not outright degrading, to conclude that that the identities of black men and women are simply limited to their resilience. These four books showcase the rich spectrum of…

NonfictionFictionSatireLiterature

Book Clubs: August 2019

Feature by Julie Hale

★The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
A 2019 Pulitzer Prize finalist, Rebecca Makkai’s The Great Believers is a poignant novel of the AIDS epidemic that follows a Chicago-based group of friends who are contending with the rise of the disease in the 1980s. Yale Tishman is planning a major art show, but his success is overshadowed by the deaths that are sweeping through the gay community. As he weathers the loss of colleagues and companions, his closest confidante is Fiona, the sister of his late friend Nico. Thirty years later, Fiona is searching for her daughter, Claire, in Paris. Her relationship with Claire is a fraught one, and Fiona struggles to make sense of it while continuing to process the heartbreak of the epidemic. Makkai skillfully connects the plotlines of the past and present, exploring the fears and misconceptions connected to the epidemic and demonstrating their impact on her characters. Filled with larger-than-life personalities, Makkai’s wise and compassionate novel bears witness to an important era.

My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
Ayoola has a habit of dispatching her boyfriends, and she relies on her sister, Korede, to help her tidy up after each murder. Braithwaite’s multilayered, darkly funny novel explores the power of desire and female agency.

Flights by Olga Tokarczuk
Tokarczuk, one of Poland’s most beloved writers, tackles identity, travel and the nature of home in these breathtaking short essays and stories.

Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy by Anne Boyd Rioux
Rioux provides insights into the life of Louisa May Alcott and the writing of Little Women, examining the novel’s enduring appeal and its contemporary significance.

The Shakespeare Requirement by Julie Schumacher
Schumacher’s satirical take on academia—its complexities and insular nature—feels spot on, and she offers an appealing protagonist in Jason Fitger, a long-suffering English professor.

★The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
A 2019 Pulitzer Prize finalist, Rebecca Makkai’s The Great Believers is a poignant novel of the AIDS epidemic that follows a Chicago-based group of friends who are contending with the rise of the disease in the 1980s. Yale…

NonfictionLiterature

The monstrous feminine

Feature by Anna Christensen

The harrowing realities of being female in a wicked world have inspired horror, gothic and speculative fiction for centuries.

In late 2018, prominent horror film producer Jason Blum came under fire on Twitter for defending his production company’s failure to hire female directors, saying it was the result of women’s disinterest in exploring horror. Women, it turns out, not only like the dark just fine, they’ve staked it out as their own. Indeed, it’s largely due to women that the horror genre developed as it has. When literature that was gothic, dramatic and shocking was thought to be trash unfit for the highbrow male, women writers and readers flooded the macabre void. Through horror, they began to write the dark side of the female experience: endangered, haunted, preyed upon.

In Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror and Speculative Fiction, scholars of the weird Lisa Kröger and Melanie R. Anderson trace the genealogy of women who’ve dealt in the unsettling, from the 17th century into the present. This book is inspired not only in the way it explores what the off-kilter, the monstrous and the half-known has meant to women for centuries but also in how it illuminates the often unusual lives of the women who crafted these dark worlds. Amelia Edwards was a swashbuckling explorer who traveled Egypt with her female partners in the Victorian era and wrote stories about mummies. Daphne du Maurier enigmatically referred to herself as a “disembodied spirit” throughout her childhood. Shirley Jackson was whispered to be a witch. As rebels within the male-dictated feminine role, were these women writing themselves as monsters? Or was it the world around them that was malformed, menacing?

Sady Doyle would answer, “Why not both?” The engrossing Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers: Monstrosity, Patriarchy, and the Fear of Female Power embarks on a fascinating exploration of the women we make into monsters in film, in literature and in life. (Behind every male serial killer is a bad mother, society would say, as Doyle rolls her eyes.) When a woman steps outside her prescribed role, Doyle argues, suddenly everyone’s a Puritan minister, signing the cross and hissing, “Witch.” What is Lucy Westenra from Dracula if not a woman who consumed as she pleased? What were the protagonists of the film The Craft but disempowered girls who finally stood up? Doyle uses these tales to examine what feminine power can mean to us now.

It’s thought that Mary Shelley wrote her Creature as a metaphor for womanhood—a trod-upon and mistreated thing that famously stated, “If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear!” upon discovering that being nice got it nowhere. Doyle might agree. In an era that seems to reflect renewed violence against women, it might be time to sweetly remind those around us that we are dangerous. Monsters, after all, have claws.

It’s largely due to women that the horror genre developed as it has.
NonfictionLiterature

Gift books: For the friend who’s read more books than you

Feature by Julie Hale

Book lovers, bibliomaniacs, librarians at heart—call them what you will, some readers take the contents of their shelves very seriously. We’ve rounded up a quartet of titles for the literature lovers on your gift list.

The Penguin Classics Book by Henry Eliot
The Penguin Classics Book, edited by Henry Eliot, will send bibliophiles over the moon. Spotlighting 1,200 works and covering four centuries, this handsome volume provides an overview of the Penguin Classics imprint, which released its first title—a new translation of The Odyssey by E.V. Rieu—in 1946. Filled with archival gems including images of vintage covers and rare editions, all beautifully reproduced and ripe for perusal, the book gives readers a sense of the imprint’s enormous output. Eliot, a Penguin Classics editor, describes the volume as “a reader’s companion to the best books ever written.” Indeed, the diverse featured titles are drawn from every conceivable genre: poetry, drama, philosophy, fiction, history and more. The book stands as a tribute to Penguin Classics’ endeavor to publish accessible, affordable editions of essential literary works from around the world. Author biographies, précis of major literary movements and background on the development of Penguin Classics as a publishing entity make this tome a necessary addition to the library of every book lover.

Great Goddesses by Nikita Gill
Classics also serve as the foundation for Great Goddesses: Life Lessons From Myths and Monsters, a new collection of poems and prose by British Indian author Nikita Gill. Mining ancient Greek stories for feminist inspiration, Gill offers fresh interpretations of archetypal tales that feature formidable women—Artemis, Hera, Hestia, Penelope, the list goes on—each with an indomitable spirit and distinctive destiny. In “Athena Rises,” the goddess is at once coolly self-possessed and irrationally passionate, a figure whose “heart wears wisdom skin / and wit-warmed splendor, / the echoes of a war cry holding / its four chambers together.” In “Gorgon (A Letter to the Patriarchy),” Gill reenvisions the snake-haired Medusa: “Perhaps the truth about Gorgons / is they are just women, / women who do not bend to the world or fit into the narrow mould you want them to.” Throughout, Gill includes “Mortal Interludes”—lyrical passages of personal reflection that demonstrate the messages she gleans from the myths. With hand-drawn illustrations that match the magnificence of their subject matter, Great Goddesses is a provocative tribute to the power of female agency.

March Sisters by Kate Bolick, Jenny Zhang, Carmen Maria Machado & Jane Smiley
Any list of literature’s leading ladies would surely include the March sisters from Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. Part of the appeal of Alcott’s esteemed novel, which turns 150 this year, lies in her nuanced depictions of the siblings, who couldn’t be more dissimilar: Meg, mature and dutiful, is the eldest; headstrong Jo is a budding writer; delicate Beth has a kindhearted disposition; and Amy, the youngest, is a vivacious beauty. A fascinating new book pays tribute to Alcott’s heroines. In March Sisters: On Life, Death, and Little Women, authors Kate Bolick, Jenny Zhang, Carmen Maria Machado and Jane Smiley contribute essays on the little woman of their choice. In addition to reflecting on how the book impacted them, each contributor delves into the singular bond she feels to each sister, investigates Alcott’s inspirations and intentions and explores why the book remains relevant today. March Sisters is a must-have for steadfast fans and those new to Alcott’s novel.

Peculiar Questions and Practical Answers by the New York Public Library
Readers who live for trivia will find innumerable tidbits of interest in Peculiar Questions and Practical Answers. Comprised of queries posed to New York Public Library staffers, this weird, wonderful book draws on archives dating back to the 1940s. Some of the questions are sensible (“May a funeral be held on July 4th?”), some are true curiosity ticklers (“How many seeds are there in a watermelon?”), and some appear calculated to confound (“What is the life cycle of an eyebrow hair?”). Questions of this kind would stretch the skills and stamina of the most long-suffering researcher. Yet library staff stepped up and supplied crisp, succinct responses to all inquiries. New Yorker illustrator Barry Blitt captures the surreal, slightly mad mood of the proceedings in his clever cartoons. This pocket-size book has enormous appeal. 

Book lovers, bibliomaniacs, librarians at heart—call them what you will, some readers take the contents of their shelves very seriously. We’ve rounded up a quartet of titles for the literature lovers on your gift list.

The Penguin Classics Book by Henry Eliot
…

PhotographyMemoirLiteratureFilmArt

Gift books: For the film buff who dreams in black and white

Feature by Linda M. Castellitto

A glamorous person deserves a glamorous present.

These four books, created by cinephiles for cinephiles, are perfect picks for the film buff in your life: They usher readers behind the scenes and offer a bit of dish, a lot of insight and plenty of glam Old Hollywood fun.

The Hollywood Book Club by Steven Rea
Steven Rea’s The Hollywood Book Club: Reading with the Stars is filled with black-and-white photos of actors from Tinseltown of yore reading at home and on set, poolside and at kitchen tables. The stars’ artful poses and occasional sly grins keep things interesting, a la Gregory Peck looking up from To Kill a Mockingbird. Film critic and photo archivist Rea’s witty captions add color and context. He explains the meaning behind the featured books and offers insider details (Edward G. Robinson collected French Impressionist art; Bette Davis’ husband wanted a divorce because she read too much). This fascinating dive into Hollywood history is a splendidly starry way to add to your TBR pile.

Letters from Hollywood by Rocky Land & Barbara Hall
Rocky Lang and Barbara Hall know movies. Lang, son of a studio executive, is a producer, director and writer; Hall is a film historian and archivist. Their compendium Letters from Hollywood: Inside the Private World of Classic American Moviemaking is an excellent reference and engrossing exploration of American film from the silent era through the 1970s. Letters to and from famous actors, directors and more (Bela Lugosi, Katharine Hepburn, Claudia McNeil, Irving Berlin, Tom Hanks) are augmented by photos and other ephemera. Film buffs will revel in flipping to favorite luminaries, checking out surprising pen pals, admiring vintage stationery design and pondering the vanished art of writing letters. As Peter Bogdanovich writes in the foreword, “What a great idea!”

The Movie Musical! by Jeanine Basinger
At the beginning of The Movie Musical! Jeanine Basinger writes, “I was raised on musicals, and I love them.” That affection is evident in this 650-plus-page master class and love letter to the form and its practitioners. The author, a film historian and author of 11 other film books, takes readers on an edifying journey through the evolution of Hollywood musicals, from “the arrival of sound” in 1927’s The Jazz Singer to present-day extravaganzas like Bohemian Rhapsody (and La La Land, which she Does Not Like). She offers insight on what makes a musical, reveals the ways in which art and business collide and assesses the appeal of everyone from Gene Kelly to Diana Ross to Channing Tatum. Devotees will delight in revisiting beloved films—and making a list of musicals to watch ASAP.

Home Work by Julie Andrews
In this follow-up to 2008’s Home, Julie Andrews and her daughter Emma Walton Hamilton dive into Andrews’ movie-making era, which began in 1962 when Walt Disney offered her the lead role in Mary Poppins. In Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years, the authors bring us along on Andrews’ thrilling movie star journey with fascinating revelations about films like The Sound of Music, Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain, and Andrews’ second husband Blake Edwards’ 10 and That’s Life (the latter was their final film together; he died in 2010 after a 41-year marriage). Andrews was initially insecure in front of the cameras, but that soon gave way to using stage-honed instincts to inhabit characters from the outside in—via costumes and wigs, as well as, say, giving Ms. Poppins stiffly turned-out feet “to punctuate the impression of Mary’s character when flying.” Andrews shares diary entries, too, as she muses on the perpetual tug-of-war between family and work; the depression that plagued so many colleagues, including Edwards; and memorable trips abroad. Home Work is a multifaceted and absorbing 20-year tour of Hollywood through the eyes of one of its most beloved players.

These four books, created by cinephiles for cinephiles, are perfect picks for the film buff in your life.

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