Books on Hollywood, Movies and TV By various authors

c.2023, various publishers, $29.00 to $38.00, various page counts

Pass the salt, please. Did you remember to add lots of butter? Of course, you did. What’s popcorn without butter and salt? What’s a movie without popcorn? And what’s a movie without these great books about Hollywood and TV?

It’s been said that the great director Alfred Hitchcock was obsessed with having beautiful blonde women in his iconic movies. Surely, he cast some of Hollywood’s most lovely ladies and in “Hitchcock’s Blondes” by Laurence Leamer (Putnam, $29.00), you’ll read about Bergman, Kelly, Leigh, Novak and the other women who screamed their way through a Hitchcock film. But while the ladies take center stage in this book, you’ll also read about the director himself and his mastery of the genre. What did he know about you that made you want to see his flicks? If you’re a fan of Alfred Hitchcock’s movies, you need to see this book next.

Movies are great escape mechanisms but if you’re someone who’s really bugged by simple errors in a story, then you need “Hollywood and History: What the Movies Get Wrong from The Ancient Greeks to Vietnam” by Jem Duducu (Rowman & Littlefield $38.00). We all make mistakes and this book is full of them – errors in war films, historical inaccuracies and downright fabrications. The list here is wide, and it’ll make you want to watch all these films again so you can spot the oopses all over again. This is a book for historians as well as film buffs, and especially for smarty-pantses who want a little pepper with their popcorn.

Did you ever wonder what all this movie- watching and TV-consuming has done to the way you think? In “You Are What You Watch: How Movies and TV Affect Everything” by Walt Hickey (Workman, $30.00), you’ll see that your mind isn’t all that’s affected.

Watch an exciting scene in your favorite show or film and you know that your heart will pound but what else happens to you while you’re watching? Hickey shows that our choice of what we watch for entertainment changes us physically, but it also affects the economy, the names of the Class of 2041 and your safety at the beach. This book is full of graphs, short paragraphs, and tons of surprises, and it’s fun reading.

Once upon a time, attending a movie without watching a review of it was unthinkable. You just simply didn’t go unless it was rated, and “Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever” by Matt Singer (Putnam, $29.00) brings those days back. But this isn’t just a book about movies; it’s about friendship, disagreement and two guys who made a living watching movies and telling America about it. Movie fans will want this book, but so will critics and nostalgia-lovers, too.

And what if these books on Hollywood entertainment aren’t enough? You don’t need tickets to get into your local bookstore or library and you can ask a bookseller or librarian for their best picks and flicks and it won’t cost you a thing.

Then pass the popcorn, please.

— The Bookworm Sez