Weekend books.

If, like me, you don't know all that much about Julie Andrews, you may find Emma Brockes's review of her Home: A Memoir of My Early Years rather startling. "Many celebrity memoirs overegg the rotten aspects of a childhood in order to flatter the achievements that follow it, but Andrews resists this," writes Brockes. "Her approach is restrained, and the quality of her prose such that you are reminded she is already an established children's author." Andrews's tale ends when she leaves England for Los Angeles and Mary Poppins. Brockes: "To continue with the story you can skip to Page 118 of Richard Stirling's Julie Andrews: An Intimate Biography, an extensive cut-and-paste job." Still, "It is interesting to reread the critics' original responses to her films. Pauline Kael thought The Sound of Music would probably be 'the single most repressive influence on artistic freedom in movies for the next few years.'"

Updated through 3/30.

Also in the New York Times Book Review, Barry Gewen reviews Charles Ferguson's No End in Sight: Iraq's Descent into Chaos. The documentary, of course, came first. "Now he has taken the material he collected from more than 50 interviews, expanded and updated it with additional interviews, added his own interpolated commentary and a charming introduction, and produced a book... that, in its way, is as powerful as his movie, and equally heartbreaking. With the leisure that a book affords, a reader comes to understand why both versions of No End in Sight work so well."

JJ at As Little as Possible makes a strong case for Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood. And via Jan Chaney's celebration of the new spiffed-up DVD release of Bonnie and Clyde in the Washington Post, I happened to stumble across a transcript of a chat with author Mark Harris.

"There was about [Joan Crawford] a sense that her success had come at a price immeasurably high, and what she had endured in getting to the top had to be worse than anyone could know." Kevin Thomas finds Charlotte Chandler's Not the Girl Next Door: Joan Crawford, a Personal Biography to be "indispensable for future considerations of Crawford and her career."

Also in the Los Angeles Times, Charles Frazier, author of Cold Mountain, remembers Anthony Minghella: "Anthony sent every draft of his screenplay my way for comment. I hadn't expected it, and we didn't always agree on the details. I didn't win all the arguments, and that was all right with me. The book was mine and the movie was his. But it is hard to imagine a book writer being treated with more respect and consideration." More from Ryan Gilbey in the New Statesman, where Rachel Cooke reviews The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency.

"Joanna Hershon's The German Bride is an elegantly written historical novel about Jews in self-imposed exile in the American Southwest," writes Kate Ahlborn. "VF Daily asked the author what her dream cast would be were The German Bride to be adapted for the big screen."

Back in the LAT: Mary Rourke: "Arthur Lyons, who wrote a number of detective novels set in California and co-founded the Palm Springs Film Noir Festival, died Friday. He was 62."

Update, 3/30: Ada Calhoun on David Bret's Clark Gable: Tormented Star: "This breathtakingly trashy biography does not skimp on sordid anecdotes.... For all its smut, the book is painfully unsexy."

Posted by dwhudson at March 28, 2008 3:40 PM