The New Criterion
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FeaturesJuly 2003 Beach reading with Max by Max Watman On four novels that offer more than raised gold lettering.
size=+2>By August, the summer sun has worn the sharpest
minds
dull. If summer were a weekend, August would be Sunday morning.
Wake up late, and start drinking early, it’s time for
brunch.
Sleepy intoxication should infect one’s reading habits as well. Esoteric tomes have no place in the tote bag. Leave them behind. You won’t be able to understand what you read anyway—the sun will have cooked your brain—and those dense pages will clash with the soft zing of your mimosa. What should you do? Consult the NY Times summer-reading book review? No, there you’ll find nothing but the same old bosh they’ve been peddling throughout the year. Go to the airport and grab the first book you see with raised gold lettering? Would that it were so. These books should be excellent. In the abstract, they satisfy. They are without pretension, written to entertain, and they rela ... This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchaseSubscribe to TNC (Print and Online editions) Subscribe to TNC (Online only) This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 21 July 2003, on page 0 Copyright © 2012 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/beachreading-watman-1704
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by Max Watman Reviews of "The View from Castle Rock: Stories," by Alice Munro; "Talk Talk," by T.C. Boyle; and "Special Topics in Calamity Physics," by Marisha Pessl. Christopher, for better & for worse On the critic, polemicist & raconteur Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011).
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