it gives me the news and current events THROUGH the filter created by looking specifically at What People Are Writing Books About. It's a filtered view of the world.
[excerpt] > > > > > "The Queen Mother" is a labor of love, both for the author and for anyone who tries reading it from cover to cover. The authorized biography of a woman who was born as the 20th century was beginning and died about a year after it ended, it is a linear, you-are-there chronicle of the events of her life. Mostly this means lunches, balls, charity events, shooting parties. She cut cakes, she cut ribbons, she cut the rug. She was a royal. She read the job description, first issued in 1689.
...Her brother-in-law Edward, who lied about his net worth at the time of his abdication and was seemingly being groomed by the Nazis to replace his brother should things break nicely for the Third Reich, threatened to slit his throat if Mrs. Simpson deserted him.
Unlike the patriotic, public-spirited, good-hearted queen mother, Edward was basically a worthless human being. < < < < <
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"She cut cakes, she cut ribbons, she cut the rug."
"...should things break nicely for the Third Reich..."
"basically a worthless human being"
I can't resist prose like that, so why try?
However, I won't ever get time to read that whole book; reading just the entertaining review gives me enough info to enjoy and continue formulating my concept of things.
That's another thing book reviews are good for: you never get time to read all books, but you can mine a lot of riches from just the reviews.
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Reviews I liked this week besides the one about the Queen Mother:
"Under The Dome" by Stephen King
"Samuel Johnson: A Life" reviewed by Harold Bloom
"Robert Altman: The Oral Biography"
"Postcards from the Edge: Tocqueville's Letters Home"
"At The Morgan: The Jane Austen her Family Knew"
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(haven't read yet -- saving for "dessert" but expect to enjoy:'
"Books about the Obama Campaign" - !
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Back to "The Queen Mother": the banal along with the glorious and inspiring -- like every life, perhaps.
You have --
> > > > > Back at the house there was tea to be taken in the drawing room, which featured an ancient gramophone with long-playing records of such old favorites as the Crazy Gang, and an equally aged television set for watching videos (rarely if ever the news). < < < < <
but also --
> > > > The immense affection the public felt for her antedates the central event in her life, when she and her husband refused to flee London during the Battle of Britain, a heroic, enormously symbolic act that helped pull her equally heroic countrymen through one of the darkest moments in their history.
No one alive at the time ever forgot her courage, nor should anyone alive today. < < < < <
Evil's presence in the world requires Heroism.
Now -- what, for lunch??
-30-
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