Books acquired: “The Leisure Architecture of Wayne McAllister,” Chris Nichols.
Books read: “Vertigo: The Making of a Hitchcock Classic,” Dan Auiler; “Henry Bumstead and the World of Hollywood Art Direction,” Andrew Horton; “The Art of Alfred Hitchcock,” Donald Spoto; “The Films of Alfred Hitchcock,” Robert Harris and Michael Lasky; “Mudd’s Angels,” J.A. Lawrence; “Casablanca,” Richard Anobile.
As a sort of hobby, I’ve been watching Alfred Hitchcock’s movies, in order, from the beginning in the 1920s to the end in the 1970s. It’s taken me roughly three years of intermittent effort, but it’s been worthwhile, as I revisited some old favorites and found some new favorites. Hitch made a bunch of so-so movies too, especially in the early days, but I won’t hold that against him.
As I went along, I read a couple of film-by-film guides, by Harris and Lasky and by Spoto. In November I focused on watching the last four movies and in doing so finally finished those two books. Huzzah! Harris and Lasky’s is okay, more of a coffee table tome, while Spoto’s is more serious.
Along the same lines, I read two other Hitch-related books, one on “Vertigo,” perhaps his greatest movie, and one on Hollywood art director Henry Bumstead, an Ontario native whom I interviewed a decade ago for a feature and who designed sets for four Hitchcock films. Those books were useful for specialists.
I rounded out the month with two other movie or TV-related books: “Casablanca” presents stills from the movie paired with all the dialogue, an interesting way to experience the movie; the “Star Trek” book is the 13th and last in the series of Bantam paperbacks that adapted all the original episodes. I would call this one a guilty pleasure except it wasn’t all that pleasurable.
I owned all the Trek books as a lad, through No. 12; a year or two ago, I found them through No. 11 at Calico Cat in Ventura, with the same covers I previously owned, and couldn’t resist buying them. I tracked down the other two somewhere since then. So I read the one I hadn’t read before and can scratch that off my reading list.
I bought Bumstead’s book from the man himself (but only read bits of it at the time); bought “The Films of Hitchcock” at the Book House in St. Louis around four years ago; can’t recall where or when I got “Vertigo” or “Casablanca,” but got them in the past decade; and bought Spoto’s book, published in 1976, in ’76 or ’77. As most of his 50-some films were unavailable to me then, only the ones that popped up TV, I read just a few of the analyses originally.
You have no idea how satisfying it is to have now read this book cover to cover after some 36 years of ownership.
I’m up to 72 books read for 2013 and am eyeing three for December. One is 460 pages, but it should be a slam dunk as I’m 380 pages into it already.
How was your November, reading-wise?
Next month: a 460-page book, and a couple more.
