Movies like Stone Reader

February 18, 2021 10:46 AM

I’m looking for feature-length (90 minutes or more) documentaries about books and reading, or documentary adaptations of non-fiction books. I just rediscovered Stone Reader and would love to see more movies like it.
posted by pxe2000 to Media & Arts (3 answers total)

Best answer: The Booksellers (2019), a documentary about rare book sellers, is on Amazon prime and it's pretty great. Lest it sound very dusty, old, and white it's partly about the increasing diversity in the book trade and the need for more of it.

84 Charing Cross Road (1987), based on the real life story of the relationship between a woman and her book dealers, is available on Vudu.

Salinger (2013) a somewhat controversial doc about the author is available on Hbo max.

Also on HBO is Genius (2016), in which Colin Firth plays editor Maxwell Perkins with dignity and Jude Law slobbers all over the scenery as Thomas Wolfe. It gorgeously evokes early 20th century New York though and it's even pretty good on the experience of reading, even if Law is unintentionally funny to me.
posted by Jahaza at 11:12 AM on February 18, 2021 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Ex Libris is on Kanopy (and maybe other places) and is a behind the scenes documentary about the New York Public Library.
posted by bookmammal at 11:50 AM on February 18, 2021

Best answer: You might also like Patience (After Sebald). It "s a multi-layered film essay on landscape, art, history, life and loss - an exploration of the work and influence of German writer WG Sebald (1944-2001), told via a long walk through coastal East Anglia tracking his most famous book 'The Rings Of Saturn'."
posted by perhapses at 5:05 PM on February 18, 2021