Writers Read: Tom Santopietro

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Tom Santopietro

Tom Santopietro is the author of The Importance of Being Barbra, Considering Doris Day (a New York Times Editor’s Choice) and Sinatra in Hollywood. He has worked for the past twenty years in New York theater as a manager of more than two dozen Broadway shows.

His new book is The Godfather Effect: Changing Hollywood, America, and Me.

Santopietro's response to my recent query about what he has been reading:

I’m usually in the midst of three books: one fiction, one non-fiction, and a separate book for commuting on the subway (I live in NYC and am on the C line, recently voted the worst line in the entire system for the third year running--slowest trains, oldest trains, dirtiest, and least intelligible announcements. Ahh- the joys of New York. A good book is definitely necessary…)

Stephen Sondheim: Look, I Made A Hat. Turns out Sondheim is as good a writer as he is composer/lyricist, which is saying a lot. Smart, witty, and filled with painstaking (and fascinating) detail. Reading the book is like taking a master class in songwriting, musical theatre, and American pop culture, with the smartest and toughest professor you ever had.

Amor Towles: The Rules of Civility. Intricately plotted, but most of all noteworthy for the beauty of the language. Echoes of Fitzgerald (and a bit of John O’Hara) but a voice all the author’s own. Towles possesses an extraordinary style which he maintains from start to finish.

Louis Auchincloss: Woodrow Wilson. Part of the Penguin Lives series, this very slim (125 pages) book nonetheless manages to explore and explain the enigma of Woodrow Wilson--the man Auchincloss terms “the greatest idealist who ever occupied the White House.”