Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up blocks from Hollywood Boulevard in the late ā€˜60s and early ā€˜70s and had something like a front-row seat to the greatest pop culture five-car pile-up in American history. At the Canteen on Hollywood and Vine, where my aunt would take me on summer weekdays for the ā€œExtras for Extras Smorgasbord,ā€ youā€™d rub shoulders with aging starlets, cowpokes, starry-eyed young hopefuls, and ā€œleading menā€ in five-and-dime ascots who never had a leading role. Even Billy Barty, always of good cheer, would make the sceneā€”he was so nice to me, and I had no idea he played my hero, Sigmund the Sea Monster!


I wrote

Cinnamon Girl

By Daniel Weizmann,

Book cover of Cinnamon Girl

What is my book about?

In Adamā€™s second adventure, his beloved former piano teacher makes a deathbed request: he wants Adam to prove his sonā€™sā€¦

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

The books I picked & why

Book cover of Hollywood Babylon: The Legendary Underground Classic of Hollywood's Darkest and Best Kept Secrets

Daniel Weizmann Why did I love this book?

If this beautifully illustrated collection of Hollywood tragedies were only kink, only lurid scandal like so many cheap TV potshots, it wouldnā€™t be the iconic masterpiece it has become. Kenneth Angerā€™s take on the faded and fallen Hollywood differs because he loves the place and its people with all his heart.

A child starling and renegade director in his own right (Scorpio Rising, Kustom Kar Kommandoes), he oozes child-like wonder and horror on every page. As he puts it in the bookā€™s equally stark sequel, Hollywood Babylon II, the movies ā€œpromise immortality, but donā€™t really deliver.ā€   

By Kenneth Anger,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Hollywood Babylon as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

ā€œKenneth Anger has fashioned a delicious . . . box of poisoned bonbons. Picking through the slag heap of the Hollywood dream factory, [he] has put together a truly prodigious anthology of star-studded scandal.ā€ā€”The New York Times

Kenneth Anger is a former child movie actor who grew up to become one of Americaā€™s leading underground filmmakers. Hollywood Babylon was originally published in Paris, and quickly became an underground legend. Not a word has been changed. Not a story omitted. Here is the hot, luscious plum of sizzling scandal that continues to shock the world.


Book cover of Seize the Day

Daniel Weizmann Why did I love this book?

Not usually considered a Hollywood novella per se, Bellowā€™s ā€œsmall grey masterpieceā€ (V.S. Pritchett) tracks failed actor Tommy Wilhelm on a dark Manhattan day when his luck and his money run out.

This book is at once a tender portrait of failure and a searing indictment of the false promises America makes to the gullible. Along the way, Tommy recalls his one and only screen roleā€”as a Hollywood extra, he briefly appeared barelegged in a kilt, pretending to blow bagpipesā€”just one more humiliation in a string of let-downs. By dayā€™s end, Tommy goes face to face with humanity in a subway station and spirals toward ā€œthe heartā€™s ultimate needā€ā€”tears. 

By Saul Bellow,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Seize the Day as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

ā€œWhat makes all of this so remarkable is not merely Bellowā€™s eye and ear for vital detail. Nor is it his talent for exposing the innards of character in a paragraph, a sentence, a phrase. It is Bellowā€™s vision, his uncanny ability to seize the moment and to see beyond it.ā€ ā€“Chicago Sun-Times

A Penguin Classic

Fading charmer Tommy Wilhelm has reached his day of reckoning and is scared. In his forties, he still retains a boyish impetuousness that has brought him to the brink of chaos: He is separated from his wife and children, at odds with his vain,ā€¦


Ad

Book cover of The Extraordinary Journey of David Ingram: An Elizabethan Sailor in Native North America

The Extraordinary Journey of David Ingram by Dean Snow,

An ordinary sailor named David Ingram walked 3600 miles from Mexico to Canada over the course of eleven months in 1568-9. There, he and two companions were rescued by a French ship on the Bay of Fundy. They were the first Englishmen to explore the interior of North America.

Englishā€¦

Book cover of Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business

Daniel Weizmann Why did I love this book?

Wanna know what happens when you donā€™t pay off the mobbed-up indie record promo guys, fellas like Joe Isgro and Fred DiSipio? Iā€™ll tell you whatā€”your record doesnā€™t get played on the radio, shmuck.

This killer history of the mavens and crooks who made the record business spin is enlightening, chilling, and hilarious at turns. Some radio programmers, once paid off, will take a record they have never heard, shake it by their ears, and say, ā€œSounds good; I like it!ā€ 

By Fredric Dannen,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Hit Men as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Copiously researched and documented, Hit Men is the highly controversial portrait of the pop music industry in all its wild, ruthless glory: the insatiable greed and ambition; the enormous egos; the fierce struggles for profits and power; the vendettas, rivalries, shakedowns, and payoffs. Chronicling the evolution of America's largest music labels from the Tin Pan Alley days to the present day, Fredric Dannen examines in depth the often venal, sometimes illegal dealings among the assorted hustlers and kingpins who rule over this multi-billion-dollar business.


Book cover of The Habit of Loving

Daniel Weizmann Why did I love this book?

Lessing was the rare woman among Britainā€™s pack of Angry Young Men in the late Fifties and early Sixties, and, among her primary targets, was Hollywoodā€™s sometimes thin, hyper-sentimental, maudlin version of love.

The centerpiece of this collection is the gut-punching title story, all about an aging theater actor who tries and fails to rekindle an old flame and then ends up with a brash actress half his age.

His new ladyā€™s view of romance is contemporaryā€”which is to say, ice cold. After sleeping with him, she says, ā€œYou know what, George? Youā€™ve just got into the habit of loving. You just want something in your arms, thatā€™s all. What do you do when youā€™re alone? Wrap yourself in a pillow?ā€  

By Doris Lessing,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Habit of Loving as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Habit of Loving - bk501; Panther Books; Doris Lessing (Literatur-NobelpreistrƤgerin 2007); pocket_book; 1981


Ad

Book cover of Changing Woman: A Novel of the Camp Grant Massacre

Changing Woman by Venetia Hobson Lewis,

Arizona Territory, 1871. Valeria ObregĆ³n and her ambitious husband, RaĆŗl, arrive in the raw frontier town of Tucson hoping to find prosperity. Changing Woman, an Apache spirit who represents the natural order of the world and its cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, welcomes Nest Feather, a twelve-year-old Apache girl,ā€¦

Book cover of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Daniel Weizmann Why did I love this book?

Woody made fun of movie novelizations in Manhattan, but they have a special charm, especially when written by the director.* Tarantinoā€™s gripping novel captures the changing of the guard in Hollywood ā€™69 as only a native son could, with special attention paid to Mansonā€™s floppo music career.

The book also features some intense scenes that arenā€™t in the flick. For instance, in one chapter, Manson Family acolyte ā€œPussycatā€ creepy crawls into an elderly coupleā€™s home at midnight and strips naked in their bedroom while they sleep and thenā€¦yeah, well, try not turning the pages, I dare ya. 

*(Another fine example is The Last Days of Disco, With Cocktails at Petrossian Afterward by Whit Stillman.)

By Quentin Tarantino,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Once Upon a Time in Hollywood as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

THE DELUXE HARDBACK EDITION FEATURING NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN PHOTOS, BONUS MATERIAL & AN EXCLUSIVE BOUNTY LAW SCRIPT BY QUENTIN TARANTINO

Quentin Tarantino's long-awaited first work of fiction - at once hilarious, delicious, and brutal - is the always surprising, sometimes shocking new novel based on his Academy Award-winning film.

The sunlit studio back lots and the dark watering holes of Hollywood are the setting for this audacious, hilarious, disturbing novel about life in the movie colony, circa 1969.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood tells the story of washed-up actor Rick Dalton. Once Rick had his own television series, a famous westernā€¦


Explore my book šŸ˜€

Cinnamon Girl

By Daniel Weizmann,

Book cover of Cinnamon Girl

What is my book about?

In Adamā€™s second adventure, his beloved former piano teacher makes a deathbed request: he wants Adam to prove his sonā€™s innocence in a decades-earlier murder case. There doesnā€™t seem to be much hope of solving such a cold caseā€”until Adam stumbles onto a test pressing of a never-released vinyl LP. The recording is of a high school garage band lost to the tides of the Paisley Underground, the acid-fueled early ā€™80s music scene that spawned the Bangles and the Three Oā€™Clock. 

Down the psychedelic rabbit hole Adam falls, tracing the bandā€™s journey from the middle-class garage to the precipice of fameā€”a twisted tale marked by crooked DJs, elder scammers, wellness hucksters, a teen cult, and the woman who held the key to the bandā€™s triumph and ruin.

Book cover of Hollywood Babylon: The Legendary Underground Classic of Hollywood's Darkest and Best Kept Secrets
Book cover of Seize the Day
Book cover of Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

2,007

readers submitted
so far, will you?

Ad

šŸ“š You might also likeā€¦

Book cover of The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier,

The coaching book that's for all of us, not just coaches.

It's the best-selling book on coaching this century, with 15k+ online reviews. BrenƩ Brown calls it "a classic". Dan Pink said it was "essential".

It is practical, funny, and short, and "unweirds" coaching. Whether you're a parent, a teacher,ā€¦

Book cover of The Bedfordshire Warlock

The Bedfordshire Warlock by Patrick R. Field,

The Bedfordshire Warlock is a speculative fiction novel that explores the concept of reincarnation with respect to the inheritance of supernatural powers and a quest to increase those powers to the level of god-like abilities.

The main character, Dorian Leeves, is the reincarnation of a 300-year-old warlock murdered during oneā€¦

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in movie stars, rock music, and New York State?

Movie Stars 53 books
Rock Music 249 books
New York State 580 books