Sunday, August 29, 2010

Smart and Entertaining. Just Like I Like Them.

I spent pretty much the entire day unplugged, reading Dead Clever by Scarlett Thomas.  It's been an engaging read, and I'm almost done.

I like the book and really like the protagonist, Lily Pascale.  She's a failed actress and an English Lit Lecturer, and I like that she equates solving a crime with solving a puzzle and literary criticism.  But I think that's mainly because she smokes.  Gauloisies. 




They just look awesome, don't they?  Think of how awesome Lily Pascale must be to smoke these while solving crimes as an ENGLISH LIT LECTURER!!








So, the book has been entertaining, although I did fall asleep a couple of times while reading it.  I put that down to tiredness rather than boring subject matter.  I haven't slept well the past couple of nights, so that plus the quiet of the house made me doze.  [The girl had gone to the beach with my sister and the husband was enjoying some special fantasy football draft time.]

But, yeah, so, the book is smart and entertaining and engaging.  I'll get more of the series, for sure.  Even though it makes me desperately want to start smoking again.  God, I miss that awful, dreadful taste.




Also, does anyone remember those cigarettes from the 1990s, the pastel ones, Sobranies?  Those were fucking amazing!  I felt so cool and cosmopolitan smoking those at the bars or the coffee shops.  Mainly the bars.  Let's be honest.  I drank like a fucking fish and the bars were more fun.














So. Yeah. Evidently I'm so susceptible to suggestion that reading a book where people smoke has me teetering on the edge.  Evidently I learned NOTHING from those afterschool specials on peer pressure.

3 comments:

  1. I haven't smoked since a few months after I came home from Europe. back then I smoked Vogues (kinda like capris only in flavors). I felt like fucking Audrey Hepburn smoking those things. I think about smoking whenever I'm in a new social situation. it's like it would ease my nerves *and* make me look like Audrey. win-win right? right. except when I smoked I smelled awful and had horrible skin.

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  2. Andygirl, I think I would put up with the bad smell and skin to look like Audrey Hepburn. Yes. I would.

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  3. I too miss smoking TERRIBLY, (I recently quit). When I was much younger and they weren't $10.00 a pack, I smoked Fantasia Lights by Nat Sherman. They were bold colors with a gold filter like Sobranies. I ALWAYS got approached in bars because they were a great conversational piece. You and I? We were so fucking cool.

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