I can’t get over the feeling that this is some elaborate prank. But here is the Booklist edition the review appears in.
The following review of Hollywood On Lake Michigan, 2nd Edition appears in the May 1, 2013 issue of Booklist, the official publication of the American Library Association (their online site has a pay wall so I have just pasted in the whole darn thing):
Film lovers and Windy City fans will cherish this updated guide. Film historian Bernstein, who wrote the first edition, “brushed up the silent section,” but the heavy lifting here is done by Corcoran, for 10 years a tour guide whose Chicago cinema excursions are his most popular offerings. Bernstein’s “The Silent Era” traces South Side black filmmakers, including Oscar Micheaux, as well as more familiar North Side figures like Charlie Chaplin and Gloria Swanson at Essanay, spotlights early movie palaces, profiles silent film accompanist David Drazin, and traces the real murder mystery behind Call Northside 777. Corcoran shifts from history to geography, exploring the Loop and nearby areas, and then Chicago’s North, West, and South Sides and their respective suburbs. Each chapter mixes nuggets for self-guided tours, tales from the making of specific films, and chats with such Chicago-area film folk as Tim Kazurinsky, the Hoop Dreams and Barbershop teams, Harold Ramis, Joe Mantegna, and Irma Hall. A list of more than 1,250 movies, mainstream and indie, filmed at least partly in Chicago or its suburbs is included.
Whoooooooooooooooooooooooeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!! OMG OMG OMG!!!!
Sorry, had to get that off my chest. This is the first official review of HOLM 2, and I have been waiting a long time for any recognition at all for my efforts, much less such a glowing recommendation.
Booklist is a publication beloved and respected by librarians and bibliophiles the world over, so this is huge in so many respects. First off, these folks live and breathe the printed word, so to get such a positive review from them provides a little more cachet than one from a regular entertainment publication (although that would be awesome too). Secondly, this is where librarians go to make decisions about what books to order for their collections; and aside from the extra copies a Booklist review can sell, it just gives me SUCH a huge thrill to think that a book I wrote is going to be available in Public Libraries— a place where I spent some of the happiest hours of my childhood.
Perhaps some dorky, lonely kid in a small town somewhere will come across it on his Library shelf and be inspired to become a writer or filmmaker— or at least be entertained for a few hours.
Thanks much to Booklist, Arnie Bernstein, Chicago Review Press, and everyone else who has helped me along this long and twisted path. I do believe I will go and have a little Happy Cry right now.