I Am Not Ashamed
If you don’t know who Barbara Payton was, you are forgiven. I was actually introduced to her and her book through Eddie Muller’s Noir Alley on TCM, and a screening of Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, a 1950 James Cagney film.
20th Century
20th Century works were written between 1900 and 1999.
These books are the ones most current readers will recognized. The modern novel has been fully developed and fiction has been separated into categories and genre. The 20th century is the root of recent history. It includes events such as suffrage, World War I, World War II, the Vietnam War, and the Cold War.
Beginning with the Edwardian Era and the Modernist movement, these years explore experiments with form and structure. Post-War and Interwar fiction is often featured in reviews.
If you’re looking for post-modernism, structuralism, post-structuralism, post-post-modernism, or any very recent movement, you will find those listed under contemporary works.
You are viewing 20th Century reviews.
You can view all other eras/movements, or you can search by language/region, genre, editor/translator, book authors, or year of edition.
Adventures in the Screen Trade
I came to William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade via last week’s book, Julie Salamon’s The Devil’s Candy. It was actually mentioned in the puffery on the back of that essential book as being another essential book.
The Devil’s Candy
Salamon is exhaustive in her recounting of the movie-making process, from casting all the way to the final agonizing returns. I learned a lot about what it takes to produce a film, and the processes of people far removed from the actors and the cameras.
The Lover
While the book is called The Lover, I would argue that it’s not much about the lover at all.
Victorian Murderesses
Hartman asks for serious scholars only, and for the reader to commit to thinking about more than how much blood the scene contained and which gory details are the most disgusting.
The Basement
This isn’t just a book about a crime nor is it a fictionalization of that crime. Millett spends time with victim and perpetrator and with her own reactions to the case.
Constant Reader
If you’ve never read Dorothy Parker, you are in for a real treat with this book. She’s a writer that was known just as much for the sharpness of her wit as for the products of her pen, and she is delightfully funny in that very special, dry, sarcastic way that I always love.
The Price of the Ticket
Don’t let the size of The Price of the Ticket discourage you. It was a collected volume that was worth the time and the effort and did not break my normally quick reading flow.
Blues for Mister Charlie
‘Blues for Mister Charlie’ is a drama in three acts that is loosely based on the Emmet Till case — a notorious lynching that happened in Mississippi in the lead up to the Civil Rights Movement.
The Fire Next Time
The Fire Next Time is the James Baldwin book to read if you decided that you will only read one of his works and no others — though I sincerely hope that no one does this.