I love movies. I also love reading books that would make great films, (somethings acting as a casting agent as I read), books about great directors, or books about actors and the film industry. In other words any book about any aspect of film. There is a new book out that has been receiving a great deal of buzz. The Talented Miss Highsmith : The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith by Joan Schenkar. Patricia Highsmith was the author who created Tom Ripley, the handsome, cunning sociopath and main character in 4 of her novels. The film adaption of The Talented Mr. Ripley with Matt Damon was released in 1999. Hitchcock also found her writing compelling and turned her first novel Strangers on a Train into a film in 1951 which turned out to be one of his greatest films. According to this biography "she was a horrible woman." Mean, foul-tempered and alcoholic, but a genius that wrote brilliant macabre novels.






Other Books to Consider.....


Lives of Leading Ladies
High Society: The Life of Grace Kelly
by Donald Spoto





How to Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood by William J. Mann




The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

by J. Randy Taraborrelli



Lives of Leading Man



American Rebel : the life of Clint Eastwood

by Marc Eliot




Paul Newman : a Life

by Shawn Levy



Pieces of My Heart : a Life

by Robert Wagner