Book cover of The Oscar

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By William R. Jorns on August 29, 2013 I've seen the film version of "The Oscar" on TV a few times, and I enjoyed it - especially the way Stephen Boyd "chewed up the scenery" as the ruthlessly ambitious actor, Frankie Fane. So when I came across a copy of…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Oscar as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Novelist-screenwriter-director Richard Sale’s scabrous, compulsively readable 1963 novel is packed with malicious characters scrambling up Hollywood’s “glass mountain of success” only to tumble into what Jacqueline Susann would call four years later would call “the Valley of the Dolls.” Pretty much set in Movieland’s seven circles of hell, the novel charts the rise and fall of an ex-gigolo who becomes a major movie star leading man. Grabbing a "Best Actor" Oscar nomination, he becomes hellbent on knee-capping -- or flat-out destroying -- his competitors. An acid-laced smorgasbord of its era, it teems with transactional sex, unapologetic misogyny, homophobia, and groovy…

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Book cover of December on 5C4

December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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