Books like Smoke Signals — picked by fans

At age 15, I was captivated by Ernest Hemingway and his depiction of Paris in the 1920s. This book today reignites the enchantment of those years. Hemingway's profound influence shaped my aspirations as a writer. Through his eyes, I can vividly see Paris's cafés, salons, and vibrant social scenes, which ultimately became the backdrop of my dreams.

This book, rich with lovemaking, drinking, writing, betting at the track, and the bohemian lifestyle of so many young artists in Paris, reawakens my desire to immerse myself in that world. Hemingway's narrative voice and his novels continue to speak to me in a language that feels intimately mine, reminding me of the undying impact of his work on my life and aspirations.

I love the absolutely authentic atmosphere of this book – the clothes, the music, the booze -- and the exploration of the dark side of the 1920s.

I find some of the characters sympathetic, some repellent, and some impossible to understand, just as in real life. Regardless, I feel that I really get to know them by the end of the book, even if I still don’t understand them. I can’t help but make comparisons with that time period and now, a century later. So much has changed, yet so much remains the same.

I’ll be honest that it can be a depressing read, so I have to be in the right mood for it, but when I am, nothing else will satisfy.

Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD, the CIA, the Sixties and Beyond is one of the best books I’ve ever read. Even though I worked in Naval intelligence while I was on active duty in Germany, during the Cold War, I was still surprised at what Acid Dreams revealed about the US government and how for example, government officials were actively searching for a drug that would make American soldiers more amenable to killing. The book details how the government set out to destroy the black culture and imprison young black leaders for mostly minor drug offenses. It further explores the ways the government secretly studied the effects of LSD on its citizens. I loved this book because it opens the reader's eyes to the radical ways some government factions tried to manipulate the masses and deceive them, using the guise of the greater good as justification.

White Crow is a story that takes place in the early 1800s in California when it was still a territory, a part of Mexico, and before it became a state. The book details the story of a white boy, raised by Indians because his parents were killed. He becomes an Indian warrior whom they call White Crow and accept into their tribe. The book is like a western story, but much more complex. It shares the struggles of the lead character, Isaiah Crow, and how he becomes a part of the tribe. He marries an Indian woman and they have a child. Their son, Jedadiah grows up and carries on many of the traditions and customs he learns from the tribe but in a more modern California. I enjoyed this story because it's such a gripping story and Wood does an outstanding job of character development in this book.… show more.

I love anything written by Katherine Paterson. This book introduces Giladriel Hopkins (Gilly), a young girl waiting for her mom to come and rescue her from foster care.

Gilly’s horrendously disrespectful behavior is hard to take sometimes, and yet because we know her living situation, we quietly read along, offering her our sympathy. Paterson highlights a child’s ability to mentally clean up their parents and offer them undeserved trust, despite the fact they have neglected or abandoned their children.

Gilly’s plight increased my awareness about the constant pains some kids live with daily. Her longing for a mother’s love would resonate even with adults who longed for their own mother’s love.

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.

I met the poet Nick Flynn over twenty years ago, not long before the publication of his most famous book, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, a memoir about his father’s homelessness. Since then, he has become one of my favorite writers. The Reenactments—for my money, his best book—takes us through the surreal experience of Another Bullshit Night being turned into a film. Robert De Niro plays his father and Julianne Moore plays his mother. De Niro meets Flynn’s father, studying him for character traits. In the most heartbreaking sections, Flynn relives his mother’s suicide as it’s filmed. As Flynn writes: “How often are you offered the chance for a complete reenactment of the day of the disaster?”

If I had to pick the two most basic, and most enthralling, essays for understanding American movies, they would be Warshow’s "The Westerner" and "The Gangster," both included in this book. Warshow, who died tragically young, also gives us the two finest pieces ever written about Chaplin, in which he argues that the flaws and stresses in Chaplin’s film art somehow make it more, not less, impressive. Add Warshow’s properly skeptical account of Soviet cinema—he is appreciative, but also aware of how Communist ideology distorted Soviet film—and you have the very best from a star among the New York intellectuals.

Harris focuses on Oscar night 1968 as four of the five films nominated for Best Picture evinced Hollywood’s reluctant affirmation of the American counterculture. These “pictures at a revolution,” as he terms them—Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and the Oscar winner In the Heat of the Night—signaled a necessary industry re-think, away from bloated old-Hollywood blockbusters (like Dr. Dolittle, the fifth nominee) and towards something more politically savvy and more hip. Harris does well to chronicle the backstage/behind-the-scenes histories of all five of these films.

When I first read this years ago, it struck me as one of the great books about directing—Steven Spielberg’s ingenuity is a major focus. Revisiting it today, I realize it’s equally valuable as a screenwriting resource because serving a director’s vision is a huge part of the screenwriting life.

As Gottlieb recounts, making Jaws wasn’t stressful just because the mechanical shark kept malfunctioning but because of the pressure Spielberg was under to transform a pulpy bestseller into a crowd-pleasing spectacle. Gottlieb, the third writer to work on the project, offers his unique perspective on the all-too-common scenario of starting a production without a finished script.

Every time I return to this book, I discover another insight about screenwriting, about filmmaking, and about creativity.