Paperbacks in brief: What it is Like to go to War | Up in the Old Hotel

What it is Like to go to War

By Karl Marlantes

(Corvus, £8.99)

Rating: ***** You may not ever read a better book about war than this; it’s up there with Michael Herr’s Dispatches and Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried.  Why does the Vietnam war produce such superb books? Maybe it’s because of the way its veterans were treated. Marlantes tells you about post-traumatic stress disorder, about what it’s like to kill and about the way the rest of us are in a kind of pathological denial about what our soldiers do.  He comes clean: he says war can be exhilarating. There are some very gruesome things here, and some of the best philosophical thinking I’ve ever read in a memoir.

Up in the Old Hotel

By Joseph Mitchell

(Vintage, £11.99)

Rating: **** This is a book about New York as it was a long time ago, written by the journalist Joseph Mitchell around the middle of the last century. Mitchell was interested in history; his piece about an old bar, called McSorley’s, is from 1940, but some of the drinkers in the piece could remember old John McSorley, the original proprietor, who had died way back in 1910. Mitchell is interested in the texture of the city. He loves the cops and bums and old Italian restaurants. After a while you feel that you are really engrained in the place yourself. There is a great piece about the Fulton fish market, a superb study of loneliness in the city, and a piece about a man who is obsessed with what’s at the bottom of the harbour.

Everyone Loves You When You’re Dead

By Neil Strauss

(Canongate, £8.99)

Rating: **** Neil Strauss is famous for The Game, his book about men who try to pick up women. But he has also spent years interviewing celebrities for Rolling Stone and the  New York Times. Here, he creatively splices bits of his interviews together, so it reads like one long story about celebrity itself – the excess, the hilarity, the pretend darkness, the real darkness. He’s very good on Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, and Lady Gaga — but also Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. Sometimes you wonder if these people really say and think these things. Whatever: it’s all very diverting.

Paperbacks in brief: What it is Like to go to War | Up in the Old Hotel | Everyone Loves You When You’re Dead