Books, 12/13.

"More profoundly than any figure excepting perhaps Elvis Presley, Sinatra changed the style and popular culture of the American Century," writes Benjamin Schwartz in the Atlantic. "Frank Sinatra: The Man, the Music, the Legend, a long-awaited collection of essays gathered from a famed 1998 conference at Hofstra University and edited by Jeanne Fuchs and Ruth Prigozy, probes various aspects of Sinatra's influence in his long career... But it insists, both explicitly and in its editors' selection of subjects and themes, that the 'proper historical setting' for its subject 'is the 50s.'"

Also:

Photo by Sammy Davis, Jr assembles beautiful and revealing snaps that this gifted amateur took in the 1950s and 60s of the Hollywood elite at play (including a sad and sweet image of a little-black-dressed Marilyn tucking a small boy into bed as a late-night party hums in the other room), of Vegas showgirls, of politicians and mobsters, of Martin Luther King Jr. And of course there is Sinatra, in all his dangerous glamour - joshing with Shirley MacLaine and the rest of his band of nocturnal carousers, brooding, on the phone in sharply tailored pajamas (no doubt after sleeping through a good chunk of the day). Speaking of that glamour, Davis said, 'Only two guys are left who are not the boy next door: Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra.'"

"A novel-in-disguise, Eine Pinot Grigio, Bitte is a dark foray into capitalism gone awry," announces Sterberg Press. Bernadette Corporation's book appears in the format of a screenplay: "Set against a backdrop of decadent zombies, the screenplay follows John Delp and Aude as they shoot a movie in the cities of Paris, Berlin and Mexico City. With its wild and messy sense for the absurd, Eine Pinot Grigio, Bitte unravels that conventional Hollywood repertoire of screenwriting all to better recycle both fiction and the real."

In the Austin Chronicle:

• Marjorie Baumgarten on Peter Kobel's Silent Movies: The Birth of Film and the Triumph of Movie Culture: "No doubt about it: This book is a gorgeous visual delight - which is as it should be, since the graphics are culled from the vast silent film and memorabilia collection of the Library of Congress."

• Cindy Widner on Bill Wittliff's A Book of Photographs From Lonesome Dove: "Reproduced in sepia tones, the photographs are not movie stills in any traditional sense; their composition is more artful and idiosyncratic than documentary."

• Spencer Parsons on The Playboy Interviews: The Directors: "Honestly, the Playboy people should just scatter excerpts from the Polanski interview over the cover of this impressively dense brick of wide-ranging interviews with a standard roster of 'great' film directors (Stanley Kubrick, Ingmar Bergman, Spike Lee, Martin Scorsese, John Huston...), since no critic could hope to blurb a more scintillating or accurate come-on for its contents. Certainly, Polanski's 45 pages alone make the volume a prize."

Via Bookforum, Owen Richardson reviews Fawlty Towers: The Story of Britain's Favourite Sitcom for the Age.

"[B]ooks remained the most consistently refreshing, illuminating, diverting, original and enriching sources of entertainment in our lives," writes Laura Miller, introducing the Salon Book Awards 2007.

Slate editors and contributors choose their favorite reads of the year, too.

Three Percent lists "recommendations for the best translated works of 2007." Via the Literary Saloon.

Meantime, sad news. "Author Terry Pratchett is suffering from a rare form of early Alzheimer's disease," reports the BBC. Chris Barsanti comments: "Here we have one of the greatest living satirists, not just of this but of any age, facing down a horrible bastard of a disease in the prime of his career; no, it isn't fair.... Pratchett has termed the disease 'an embuggerance,' which I move should be added to the O.E.D. with all due speed."

Posted by dwhudson at December 13, 2007 2:46 PM