As the pandemic was announced last March and many studio films were delayed, I had to make a pivot like so many other outlets. In addition to going through my physical media, TCM recordings, and streaming, I also turned to books. What follows below is the list of every book I’ve read during the pandemic. In many instances, I’ve written book reviews or interviewed the authors. At first, I referred to these books as quarantine books but as we got deeper into the pandemic and were free to move about some more, I started referring to them as pandemic books.
- Warner Bros by David Thomson
- The Brothers Warner by by Cass Warner Sperling
- King Cohn: The Life and Times of Harry Cohn by Bob Thomas
- Laugh Lines by Alan Zweibel
- The Man Who Made The Movies by Vanda Krefft
- Hitchcock and the Censors by John Billheimer
- Goldwyn: A Biography by A. Scott Berg
- Lion of Hollywood: The Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer by Scott Eyman
- Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood by William J. Mann
- Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America by Steven J. Ross
- Bad Moms: The Novel by Nina McInery
- Five Came Back by Mark Harris
- Ernst Lubitsch: Laughter in Paradise by Scott Eyman
- On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder by Ed Sikov
- Steven Spielberg: A Biography by Joseph McBride
- Picturing Peter Bogdanovich: My Conversations with the New Hollywood Director by Peter Tonguette
- George Lucas: A Life by Brian Jay Jones
- Hope for Film by Ted Hope
- Michael Curtiz: A Life in Film by Alan K. Rode
- A Talent for Trouble: The Life of Hollywood’s Most Acclaimed Director, William Wyler by Jan Herman
- The Brothers Mankiewicz: Hope, Heartbreak, and Hollywood Classics by Sydney Ladensohn Stern
- Cary Grant: A Brilliant Disguise by Scott Eyman
- The Nolan Variations: The Movies, Mysteries, and Marvels of Christopher Nolan by Tom Shone
- I Want To Be Where The Normal People Are by Rachel Bloom
- Nichols and May: Interviews edited by Robert E. Kapsis
- Tough Sh*t by Kevin Smith
- There I Go Again: How I Came to Be Mr. Feeny, John Adams, Dr. Craig, KITT, and Many Others by William Daniels
- My Girls by Todd Fisher
- True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee by Abraham Riesman
- Star Wars: The High Republic – Light of the Jedi by Charles Soule (no review, strictly for leisure)
- Because He’s Jeff Goldblum by Travis M. Andrews
- The Art of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge by Amy Ratcliffe
- John Williams’s Film Music by Emilio Audissino
- Starstruck by Leonard Maltin (uncorrected advance reading proof, due out in October)
- 20th Century Fox: Darryl F. Zanuck and the Creation of the Modern Film Studio by Scott Eyman (uncorrected advance proof, due out in September)
- Hollywood Hates Hitler! Jew-Baiting, Anti-Nazism, and the Senate Investigation into Warmongering in Motion Pictures by Chris Yogerst
- Secrets of the Force: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Wars by Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross
- Leading Lady: Sherry Lansing and the Making of a Hollywood Groundbreaker by Stephen Galloway
- Robin by Dave Itzkoff
- Nobody Does It Better: The Complete Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of James Bond by Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross
- Engulfed: The Death of Paramount Pictures and the Birth of Corporate Hollywood by Bernard F. Dick
- Columbia Pictures: Portrait of a Studio by Bernard F. Dick
- Camera Man: Buster Keaton, The Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the 20th Century by Dana Stevens
- Hollywood and Hitler: 1933-1939 by Thomas Doherty