Thursday Evening Book Reviews
I don’t make any old excuse to link to something I’ve written, but Chris Harrald and Fletcher Watkins have written THE CIGARETTE BOOK, and I couldn’t help but recall my own ode to the cancer stick.
If you can’t wait for me to harvest each night’s small bushel of book reviews, GalleyCat’s gone and compiled a list of Twitter reviewers to feed your habit faster than I can.
A battle to change our perception of war is the focus of Ted Morgan’s VALLEY OF DEATH: THE TRAGEDY AT DIEN BIEN PHU THAT LED AMERICA INTO THE VIETNAM WAR.
The Atlantic profiles two books that celebrate misogyny: Henry de Montherlant’s THE GIRLS and CHAOS AND NIGHT.
AuthorScoop
February 18th, 2010 at 8:18 pm
A propos your ode to smoking - me too, though the re-pinkening of my lungs will be a lifetime process. Jeremy Irons is partly to blame, as per http://poetinahat.blogspot.com/2007/02/elementary-my-dear-everett.html
So a cigar is never really just a cigar. Sometimes it’s a cigar and a friend.
February 18th, 2010 at 8:41 pm
I happened to read the Atlantic piece about Montherlant last week. It’s quite good — nuanced, too. He wasn’t so much a misogynist as a frank realist about himself; he had very jaundiced attitudes toward both men and women. He believed pleasure to be the most important goal in life, nearly to the exclusion of all else. This led him to some ugly places, such as open collaboration with the Nazis. But several of the excerpts from Montherlant’s novels included in the article show him to have been a very astute observer of human behavior.
February 19th, 2010 at 12:15 am
I agree. And I think there are plenty of sturdy reasons for disliking human beings. Well articulated, you’ll still get points.
But I still wouldn’t invite him to my Superbowl party.