I've been reading books about movies recently. I've been hunting down good transfers of Orson Welles movies that usually come from bad prints. "The Trial" in particular has suffered from bad transfers unfortunately, as it might be the most visually extreme of all his films. In any case, now that the library's open again, I picked up "My Lunches With Orson", conversations with Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles, edited and transcribed by Peter Biskind, author of "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls" and other works concerning films. It's a mostly fun book, full of dish, backstories of self-promotion. It also has some of Orson Welles last thoughts. I'm currently working on David Thomson's "Sleeping With Strangers: How the Movies Shaped Desire", histories and speculations as regards sex and the cinema. I've got the feeling it would be better if Peter Biskind edited it, even though David Thompson is a very good writer. I'm picking up two books by Peter Bogdanovich, "Who the Hell's in It" and "This Orson Welles" from the library.
I've been obsessed with Thomas Pynchon ever since I pulled out a remaindered and stripped copy of The Crying of Lot 49 from the trash can of the Campus Textbook Exchange in Berkeley back in 1979. I just finished "Vineland" for the upteenth time last week. Explaining what's going on in there would be a very heavy lift. But I would recommend Vineland to the folks here on account of how much fun the author has with Rock 'n' Roll and related activities, circa 1970/1984. A central character in the novel documents street protests/police responses with 16mm gear as a radical activity, very relevant to these times.