Books like Out With the Stars — picked by fans

Before he became a writer of potboiler novels and true-crime journalism, Dominick Dunne was a film and television producer and a social butterfly who also happened also to be an avid amateur photographer. This memoir of his Hollywood days, which resulted in a crash-and-burn from which he emerged as a writer, is filled with intimate, candid images of such friends (not all faithful) as Jane Fonda, Elizabeth Taylor, Natalie Wood, Paul Newman, and Frank Sinatra, as well, of course, as Dunne and his family. There are dreamy and even eye-popping tales throughout, and if you're at all familiar with Dunne's books or magazine writing, you'll marvel at how so much of it so neatly dovetails with the life he actually lived and, thankfully, captured on film and in these frank and candid pages.

We call them 'movies' as a nickname for 'moving pictures,' and the immense importance of the 'pictures' part of that phrase is underscored by this lavish and gorgeous book celebrating the work of Hollywood's classic glamour photographers. In brief lives and portfolios of the likes of George Hurrell, Peter Stackpole, Phil Stern, Sid Avery, and Ruth Orkin, we see hundreds of photos of such icons as Marilyn Monroe, John Wayne, James Dean, Judy Garland, Marlon Brando, and Shirley MacLaine on the set and off, posed for sumptuous portraits or grabbing coffee and a smoke between takes, in iconic images and remarkable candids. David Fahey and Linda Rich, important photographers themselves, are ideal guides to this gallery, pointing out aspects of the photographers' technique and craft without losing sight of the remarkable subjects of these memorable shots.

Peter Biskind chronicles the rise of New Hollywood in the 1970s, featuring such "movie brat" directors as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and Steven Spielberg. But he also refers to such older directors as Stanley Kubrick.

It’s written in a chatty and easy-to-read style and is full of useful tidbits of information about Kubrick and especially his new backers at Warner Brothers.

If this beautifully illustrated collection of Hollywood tragedies were only kink, only lurid scandal like so many cheap TV potshots, it wouldn’t be the iconic masterpiece it has become. Kenneth Anger’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 book’s equally stark sequel, Hollywood Babylon II, the movies “promise immortality, but don’t really deliver.”   

What a world-rocking, mind-blowing journey reading Skinny Legs and All was! I read it in my twenties, and it truly was life-changing. It is imaginative and thought-provoking. It expanded my perspective on life and what might be happening right in front of my eyes that I’m missing with my limited imagination.

It’s wickedly funny and irreverent and yet addresses difficult issues that are relevant today, such as the conflict between Israel and Palestine. The storytelling is so unique, I’ve never read another book like it. It’s a book that leaves me envying someone else’s first read of it.

It also served as a source of inspiration for me as an author many years later. There was a scene in the movie Finding Forrester, where a young writer (Rob Brown) is facing writer’s block. His instructor (Sean Connery) suggests he start typing the content of a book he loves word for… show more.

This novel made a small community come alive for me.

The rhythms, the friendships, the generational passing down of story—it all resonated. What moves me most is how the past and present sit beside each other, shaping one another quietly. It showed me that belonging is built in ordinary spaces: kitchens, churches, front porches.

As I reflected on my grandmother and the community that shaped my family, I thought about this same inheritance. The power of memory, story, and place.

I’m cheating here a bit. I know Kathy and I like her a lot. Unlike me, she is a genius. I don’t need to tell any of her readers that. She is a well-respected forensic anthropologist who goes out of her way to uncover the secrets that the remains conceal. She writes about bones with the same affection we usually reserve for loved ones. I would be delighted to have her run her massive intellect over my skeleton when I’m gone.

This story expertly weaves together the tensions of a struggling family, a faltering business and a natural disaster that pushes them all to consider new ways of being. I was especially intrigued by the attempt of the characters to save wildlife after an oil spill in Louisiana. In addition, the stories of characters outside of the family provided a variety of points of view about what was happening.

The spirit of the characters encourages me to remember that there are always choices and new options if I’m willing to explore them.

This was a feel-good read about a 3-generation rivalry between two sisters in a small town involving fried chicken. (You cannot go wrong with southern food in a novel, I’m just saying.)

What I thoroughly enjoyed about this book was how the plot got thicker and thicker, revealing the backstory throughout the story in a way that made me #TeamAmanda one minute and #TeamMae the next. I like digging deep into a character’s life, and this one did so in a way that made me sympathetic to both sisters, rooting for their reunion until the very end.

I’m trying my best not to give away the ending…suffice it to say; it helped me reframe my thinking around getting to the heart of a long feud that started before you even got here.

In the Twentieth Century, the U.S. took stock of its regional specialties, resulting in landmark publications around the country. Many of the resulting books then and now tend to fixate on recipes alone, the tip of the culinary iceberg.  

During the 1980s, John Egerton meandered around the South looking for vestiges of vittles only found there at a time when regional cooking specialties across the US seemed to be fading fast.  With snippets of travel writing, interviews with artisans, anecdotes, and recipes, Southern Food demonstrated the culinary vitality and diversity of the South in one volume.   

Egerton’s work revealed the need for deeper research and more context to make sense of culinary traditions. It also helped casual observers to recognize the importance of Southern food, and that before mass-produced popular culture took hold, all food was essentially regional.