Essays & REPORTING

“In 1934, My Life Snapped”: Britney Spears’ ordeal has haunting echoes of another dark episode in Hollywood history (Slate)

A Filmy Kind of Dread: Georges Simenon and Chantal Akerman (Paris Review Daily)

The L.A. Roller Rink Where the Years Glide By (T Magazine)

Screen Shots: Worship, Fandom, and the Celebrity Picture (Paris Review Daily)

Taylor’s Multitudes: The Elizabeth Taylor Collection at Christie’s (Paris Review Daily)

What We Wish We Were: On Biopic Mania (Paris Review Daily)

REVIEWS

Emily Post: Daughter of the Gilded Age, Mistress of American Manners by Laura Claridge (Los Angeles Times)

Inferno by Eileen Myles (Bookforum)

Irrepressible: The Life and Times of Jessica Mitford by Leslie Brody (Los Angeles Times)

It’s Good to Be the King: The Seriously Funny Life of Mel Brooks by James Robert Parish and Rickles’ Book by Don Rickles with David Ritz  (New York Times Book Review)

“Miss Lachrymose,” Doris Day: The Untold Story of the Girl Next Door by David Kaufman (London Review of Books)

One Day at a Time: Manny Farber and Termite Art (4Columns)

Pedigree by Georges Simenon (Los Angeles Times)

Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985 (4Columns)

Reading for My Life: Writings, 1958-2008 by John Leonard (Bookforum)

Role Models by John Waters (Bookforum)

Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock by Jenny Odell (4Columns)

Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics by Rebecca Solnit (Bookforum)

Water to the Angels: William Mulholland, His Monumental Aqueduct, and the Rise of Los Angeles by Les Standiford (Los Angeles Times)

SUNDRY

Christopher and His Kind: Gay Writers Living in 1960s Los Angeles (FORT Los Angeles)

Liz Brown’s Virtual Bookshelf (Skylight Books)