Recommendations

books and movies

Last weekend I taught a novel writing/editing workshop at my apartment with my dear friend, Jimmy Cajoleas. Four novelists came over and we got into the big business of discussing their work top to bottom and everything in between. This was of course, after Jimmy and I, had read the manuscripts weeks ahead of time, and had marked them up with line edits and comments.

What great fun.

The participants all got our edits (and I know no better freelance manuscript editor than Jimmy, hit him up if you need a manuscript edited—jimmy.cajoleas@gmail.com and follow along with him at his substack), but the real magic of our workshop happened in person, face to face, talking out the novels, framing their scope and asking questions of their possibilities. Deep discussions were had. The white board looked like a beautiful war zone.

I taught how I reverse outline, I taught how time is the greatest friend an artist can ever have, I taught everything I know, and so did Mr. Cajoleas. And we all ate some great Jersey City eats and drank some great Jersey City beverages. The weekend was a big intellectual and emotional success if you ask me—and everyone, myself included, walked away from the weekend with tons of new ideas, renewed energy, and heightened focus. The way it should be.

There is something thrilling about being able to do this kind of work, workshopping DIY, unattached to any institution of higher learning. Though I’m never against teaching in an academic setting.

But as the DIY workshops go, I’ve got my eye on this summertime, this August, to teach another novel-writing/developmental editing/final editing workshop down at the beach. Down at the Jersey shore. I’ve got a spot I go to that I think of as a small slice of strange paradise. I’d like to teach there over a four day stretch. That workshop will be just as intensive as the one I had in my apartment, if not more so, and I’ll teach it again with Mr. Jimmy Cajoleas. That will be open to six novelists.

If you would be interested in workshopping your novel this late summer, please send me an email at budsmithwrites@gmail.com. Please have a complete first draft of your novel, at least, even better if you have a second draft finished. In my mind, May 31st would be the day the manuscripts would be due to hand over.

Okay, so, one of the things that happens when Jimmy is around, is he can’t seem to stop recommending books that have changed his life and movies that have changed his life too, and I have done great for myself by reading and watching his selections / recommendations over the years.

For the novelists who took our workshop, I asked Jimmy to please jot down a list of some of his favorite books and movies, and I said I would do the same, not repeating any of his selections. The goal was to send these along to all the participants of the workshop we had at my apartment but then I thought, oh damn, the whole world should get this list.

Lord knows I am always scrambling around for something to watch and read, for entertainment and also for deeper study. What follows is a list of 75 or so books, and 50 or so movies. Who’s counting!

So here goes:

Books

Jimmy Cajoleas:

True Grit - Charles Portis
The Member of the Wedding - Carson McCullers
We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson
Street of Crocodiles - Bruno Schulz
Lost Illusions - Honore de Balzac
Music of the Swamp - Lewis Nordan
The Postman Always Rings Twice - James M. Cain
The Driver's Seat - Muriel Spark
The Street - Ann Perry
City of Margins - William Boyle
Black Wings Has My Angel - Elliott Chaze
Train Dreams - Denis Johnson
The Savage Detectives - Roberto Bolano
Wise Blood - Flannery O'Connor
Light in August - William Faulkner
Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin
Cold Mountain Poems - Red Pine
Queenpin - Megan Abbott
The Black Dahlia - James Ellroy
Jakob von Guten - Robert Walser
The Long Goodbye - Raymond Chandler
Sisters by a River - Barbara Comyns
Narrow Road to the Interior - Matsuo Basho
In Watermelon Sugar - Richard Brautigan
The Last Good Kiss - James Crumley
Three Tales - Gustave Flaubert
The Blonde on the Street - David Goodis
Pop 1280 - Jim Thomposon
Come Closer - Sara Gran
The Talented Mr. Ripley - Patricia Highsmith
Nightwood - Djuna Barnes
Five T'ang Poets - transl. David Young
Nightmare Alley - William Lindsay Gresham
Ninety-Two in the Shade - Thomas McGuane
Why Did I Ever? - Mary Robison
Edisto - Padgett Powell
Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson


Bud Smith:

Cannery Row – Steinbeck 
Fair Play – Tove Jansson
The Summer Book —Tove Jansson
Hamlet / MacBeth – Shakespeare
To the Lighthouse – Virginia Wolfe
One More for the People – Martha Grover
The Sarah Book – Scott McClanahan 
Hill William – Scott McClanahan 
Rontel – Sam Pink
Breakfast of Champions – Vonnegut 
Slaughterhouse Five – Vonnegut
Good Women – Halle Hill 
Brothers Karamazov – Dostoevsky 
Van Gogh’s Letters – Van Gogh 
Literally Show Me a Healthy Person – Darcie Wilder 
The Metamorphosis – Kafka
Absalom, Absalom – Faulkner 
As I Lay Dying – Faulkner
Child of God – Cormac McCarthy 
Suttree – Cormac McCarthy 
Saga of the Swamp Thing – Alan Moore
Molloy – Samuel Beckett
Potted Meat – Steven Dunn
Closely Watched Trains – Bohumil Hrabel 
Too Loud, a Solitude – Bohumil Hrabel
Factotum – Charles Bukowski
Sleepovers – Ashleigh Bryant Phillips
Lonesome Dove – McMurtry
Madame Bovary – Flaubert 
Empire of Light – Michael Bible 
Pale Fire – Nabokov 
On Fire – Larry Brown 
Sorry to Disrupt the Peace — Patrick Cottrell
Rum Punch – Elmore Leonard
My Antonia – Willa Cather 
Death Comes for the Archbishop – Willa Cather
Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day – Ben Loory 
Death of Ivan Illych – Tolstoy
Anna Karenina – Tolstoy 
Short Letter Long Farewell – Peter Hanke
A Sorrow Beyond Dreams – Hanke
The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien 
With the Animals – Noelle Revas 

Movies

Jimmy Cajoleas:

Night of the Hunter — Laughton
Trouble in Paradise — Lubitsch
Tokyo Story — Ozu
Onibaba — Shindo
The Wicker Man (1973) — Hardy
In a Lonely Place — Ray
Ball of Fire — Hawks
The Apartment — Wilder
Alice in the Cities — Wenders
Don't Look Now — Roeg
The Red Shoes — Powell / Pressburger
Bringing Up Baby — Hawks
Sunset Boulevard — Wilder
Celine and Julie Go Boating — Rivette
Paper Moon — Bogdanovich
Come Drink With Me — Hu
The Wind (1928) — Sjostrom


Bud Smith

American Werewolf in London — Landis
The ‘Burbs – Dante
Let it Ride  – Pytka 
The Seventh Seal – Bergman
Best in Show – Guest 
This is Spinal Tap – Reiner 
Where is the Friend’s House – Kiarostami 
Jaws – Spielberg
Husbands – Cassavettes 
My Cousin Vinny – Lynn
Umbrellas of Cherbourg – Demy 
Texas Chainsaw Massacre – Hooper
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – Leone 
Die Hard – McTiernan 
Ikiru — Kurosawa
Rocky – Avildsen 
Near Dark – Bigelow 
Paris, Texas – Wenders 
Evil Dead 2 – Raimi
Beach Bum – Korine 
Daddy Long Legs  – Safdie 
The Return of Martin Guerre – Vigne 
Raising Arizona – Cohen
Stranger Than Paradise – Jarmusch 
Truffle Hunters – Dweck / Kershaw

… I’m so sad the list is over

I hope you enjoy some of these selections. Or maybe even all of them. Lord knows we probably did better than the Netflix or Amazon algorithm at the very least.

Thank you for reading and thank you for watching.

Much love,

Bud Smith
and Jimmy Cajoleas