By MONTE DUTTON Click here. The hereafter is where old race fans debate the merits of Curtis Turner, Junior Johnson and Fireball Roberts. Some young NASCAR fans weren’t born when Dale Earnhardt met his maker. Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon and Rusty Wallace have their adherents, not to mention those of my age who also recognize …
Tag: review
Against all odds, I read it and enjoyed it
By MONTE DUTTON Click here. I don’t know where I got The Miracle of Castel di Sangro. I don’t remember when. I didn’t know I had it until I rummaged through a box looking for a book to read. I can only speculate. I may have bought it when I was interested in the World …
Iceman Thawed
Clinton, South Carolina, Thursday, August 6, 2020, 1:34 p.m. I have “encountered” Kimi Raikkonen before. I was about 10 feet away for a media conference at Charlotte Motor Speedway in 2011, when, away from Formula One, he tested the waters in a couple NASCAR races, one for trucks and the for what is now the …
Mastodons Run Amok
Clinton, South Carolina, Monday, March 30, 2020, 7:45 p.m. When I read Don Quixote, I found it astonishing to learn that the art of comedy had not notably advanced in over four centuries. Salman Rushdie’s Quichotte takes Miguel de Cervantes forward and adds levels that would not have been structurally feasible in 1616, when the …
Death Occurs Every Day, but We Think about It at Year’s End
Clinton, South Carolina, Monday, December 30, 2019, 9:16 a.m. I have no use for resolutions. I hereby resolve to do in 2020 what I always do, most of which is write, but I also plan to keep myself pacified with my guitar and Kindle. So there. Good to get that out of the way. It’s …
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A Tale of Women Destined to Be Ahead of their Time
Clinton, South Carolina, November 6, 2019, 9:56 p.m. I’ve read my share of books about World War II. I’ve read tales of combat and espionage, not to mention bios of Roosevelt, Churchill, and MacArthur. I try to fill in the gaps of my knowledge. I didn’t know a lot about the Eastern Front of Europe, …
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A Celebration of The Celebrant
Clinton, South Carolina, Monday, July 4, 2019, 8:29 p.m. So many words are insufficient. I’ve never liked to say that I “covered” something, such as, oh, stock car racing for 20 years. Sometimes I say it or tweet it, but I try not to write it. I’ve never liked the notion that I “pull” for …
Ultimately Worth the Reluctance
Clinton, South Carolina, Wednesday, April 17, 2019, 12:36 p.m. It’s rather a miracle that I even read The Odds of Loving Grover Cleveland. From time to time, I get to pick a free download from a list, and it’s possible I thought Rebekah Crane’s novel had something to do with President Grover Cleveland, the only …
Making Sense of Pat Conroy
Clinton, South Carolina, Thursday, March 28, 2019, 11:56 a.m. It took a long time to read My Exaggerated Life, the oral biography by Pat Conroy as told to Katherine Clark. It’s based on hundreds of conversations between the two. Conroy approved of it, though it wasn’t published until after he died of cancer on March …
An Historical Novel of Wartime Intrigue, Rendered Skillfully
Clinton, South Carolina, Tuesday, December 25, 2018 I’m quite ashamed of myself. Ordinarily, I would have devoured The Torch Betrayal, by Glenn Dyer, in a couple weeks. It was a casualty of the increasingly frenetic pace of my life over the past months. I’ve been out and about, writing stories about local affairs, editing news …
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