Books I've actually (re-)finished lately: 96

Have a life lived instead of a career. Put yourself in the safekeeping of good taste. Lived freedom will compensate you for a few losses.... If you don't like the style of others, cultivate your own. Get to know the tricks of reproduction, be a self-publisher even in conversation, and then the joys of working can fill your days.

- George Konrad

Facebooks - III

Out of Sheer Rage: In the Shadow of D.H. Lawrence / Anglo-English      Attitudes - Geoff Dyer [I don't remember which came first. Most              probably read concurrently]
God Is Not Great: the case against religion - Christopher Hitchens
Flashman - George MacDonald Fraser
Chinaman: the Legend of Pradeep Mathew - Shehan Karunatilaka [in      manuscript]
Apocalypse Now (Redux) script - John Milius
Histories - Herodotus [partial]
John Clare: A Biography - Jonathan Bate [unfinished]
In Ethiopia with a Mule - Dervla Murphy
Collected Poems - Zbigniew Herbert
Haroun and the Sea of Stories - Salman Rushdie

Today's post*

- John Felstiner, Translating Neruda: The Way to Macchu Picchu

--
* as Brother Christopher was rather fond of pointing out...

Technical Hitch?

A very close reading of Christopher Hitchens' Arguably, by Rob Crilly.

(Sadly I do not own this magnificently dust-jacketed edition. I have the crappy American paperback, with the bright yellow spine.)

Frenemies

(A new one on me.)

Hitchens v Amis; Big Papa v F Scott; you get the idea.

Worth it for the closing line on Mormon Nailer.

The truth about Mortality

Humdinger comment - second from top - on the New Statesman review of Hitchens' last waltz.

Glitch-22

In the front flap of Christopher Hitchens' new memoir it states that, in the aftermath of 9/11, the former Trotskyite was "re-energised again". Needless to say, there is no mention of his having been re-energised prior.

We can assume Hitch didn't write the blurb himself. But still.