#63: Cleopatra's Nose by Judith Thurman
Even I am amazed by the fact that, for the first time in the history of my personal Fifty Books a Year project (this is my third year keeping track), I am counting a book that I did not read in its entirety, and the reason for this is that I read most of Cleopatra’s Nose, even going so far as to underline valuable insight, interesting factoids, or particularly perfect prose (of which there is a lot, because Thurman is an amazing, if consumately chilly, wordsmith), but the truth is that it is a collection of essays and I didn’t feel that it was particularly necessary to struggle through the ones about fashion designers, of which there are many (although I did read the one about Chanel, which was interesting); of all the essays, I particularly loved the one about Edna St. Vincent Millay, the one about Charlotte Bronte, the one about New York brownstones, the one about Diane Arbus, and the one about Madame de Pompadour.
