From my library: Marlene Dietrich

A lush coffee table book on Marlene Dietrich.

From my library: Gregor/Patalas - Geschichte des Films

Ulrich Gregor and Enno Patalas are the authors of THE German history of film. The project was first published in 1962 and in several volumes followed quite extensively the history of film and cinema. Over time the work was updated. I have the complete work plus volumes of all phases of the project. There is no other publication in German that has so far surpassed this history in scope and depth.

From my library: Peter W. Engelmeier - Beauties

A nice coffee table book presenting a large collection of photos of female movie stars.

From my library: Hollywood and the Great Fan Magazines

This book reproduces pages from Hollywoods great fan magazines like Silver Screen, Screenland, Modern Screen, Screen Book and Photoplay from the 1930s when Hollywood was amazing. Of course it also reveals the gossipy character of these magazines with stories titled as "What About Clark Gable Now?", "Jean Harlow From Extra to Star", "The Truth About William Powell", "What was Hollywood thinking?" or "Norma Takes a Dare". Nevertheless, it gives nice insight into the history of cinema fandom.

From my library: The Films of the Thirties

Before the internet you really had to search for information sources on movies and cinema in general, and usually there weren't that many books. Although the Citadel cinema books weren't that sophisticated, they at least contained a lot to read about important, but also not so well-known movies. I have a whole collection of their volumes.

From my library: Ernst Friedrich - Krieg dem Kriege

This is a reprint of a book by the pacifist Ernst Friedrich, enlgish: War against War!, published 1924 in four languages, but was tranlasted into 50 other languages. It depicted the results of World War I in extremely graphic photographies in the intention to upset and instigate its readers to resist against war in any form.

From my library: Mervyn Peake - Gormengast

The complete surreal, Kafkaesk Gormenghast sage combined in one volume.

From my library: James Miller - The Passion of Michel Foucault

This is the controversial biography of Michel Foucault, which "made the claim that Foucault's experiences in the gay sadomasochism community during the time he taught at Berkeley directly influenced his political and philosophical works".

From my library: Luis Buñuel - Mein letzter Seufzer

Luis Buñuel's quite entertaining autobiography "My Last Sigh".

From my library: Memory Babe: A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac

A massive, 750-page biography from 1983.

From my library: DVD Delirium, Volume 1

The subtitle is "The International Guide to Weird and Wonderful Films on DVD" and there are 4 volumes, which I all have (although I'm not sure where I put Volume2...). They are quite thick volumes, ca. 1000 movies reviewed in each, so they're quite useful, although such books quickly become outdated.

From my library: Slanguage - A Dictionary of Irish Slang

Since I have Irish ancestors and have a special connection to Ireland by investigating our genealogy, visting the country often and quite a few friends there, I also have a large collection of books about the country. This one is - despite being a dictionary - quite entertaining, but then again, I like dictionaries and encyclopedias in general. Alone looking up all the cuss words was worth the buy!

From my library: Kate

It's no secret that I'm a big Kate Moss fan, and I have all the books of and about her. This was the very first one from 1995.

From my library: Fischer Film Almanach 1981

Before there was internet it was really difficult to find current information - on nearly any topic. The Fischer Film Almanach was an annual publication that summed up each year's movie releases complete with filmographic data, summaries and short reviews. The series lasted from 1980 till 1999, and each year the volumes became thicker. I have all of them.

From my library: Die schlechtesten Filme aller Zeiten

A 600-page dictionary of "The Worst Movies of All Times", published 2002, contains descriptions of well over 1,000 movies.

From my library: Renaud-Barrault au cinema

Each year the Berlin Film Festival also presents one or more retrospectives and publishes an accompanying book. I've been collecting them (and have also attended them when at the festival). This one is on Madeleine Renaud and Jean-Louis Barrault from 1987.

From my library: Frieda Grafe - Filmtips

The BFI webpage "A pantheon of one’s own: 25 female film critics worth celebrating" (marking International Women's Day) doesn't mention Frieda Grafe, who, besides Lotte Eisner, was one of Germany's most important film critics. In the 70s and 80s I'd regularly read her reviews in the legendary film periodical Filmkritik and in the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, but it was especially her book on Fritz Lang that has always been my essential companion to this director's movies. This volume collects her short movie recommendations that were published in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Looking her up for this entry I just found out that there now is 12-volume collection of her complete writings.

From my library: The Shadow and Its Shadow

A nice little, but quite informative British Film Institute volume collecting "Surrealist Writings on Cinema". In my film club days we used to give seminars on cinema, and based on this book I was able to present a seminar on Surrealism and Cinema (complete with a retrospective film program).

From my library: Christian Keßler - Das wilde Auge

Christian Keßler is a German film journalist, who mostly worked with the (cult) film magazine Splatting Image and is probably one of the most knowledgable experts on genre cinema and especially on the most obscure and lesser known movies. After having participated on the book Obsession, a legendary and comprehensive work on Jess Franco, he published this volume (title translated: The Wild Eye) on Italian horror movies. Needless to say this has become a coveted collector's item as well.

From my library: Michael Munn - The Hollywood Connection

Admittedly not really a sophisticated reading, but at least a very interesting one.