Milo and the Calf

Author: seanv2

  • Review: Offill’s Dept of Speculation

    Dept. of Speculation Jennifer Offill Beautifully written little gem of a book about marriage, kids, and betrayal. This is basically a book about a privileged Brooklyn intellectuals and their domestic problems. i.e. it is about me and my friends. Generally, I avoid this kind of stuff. As a rule, Brooklyn writers writing about Brooklyn writers…

  • I Suck at Exercise But I Read a lot: Totals for the Week Ending 12/20/2015

      Run Miles for the week: 14 in 2:31:42 Run Miles for the year: 1,364.1 Projected total run miles for the year: 1402.5 Run Streak: 0 Run Streak Mileage: n/a Days Until I Beat My Old Streak n/a Bike Miles for the Week: 23 in 1:55:13 Bike Miles for the Year: 580.9 Projected total bike…

  • Review: Scott’s The Magicians

    The Magicians: An Investigation of a Group Practicing BLACK MAGIC Gini Graham Scott, Ph.D. A strange little book about practitioners of so-called “Black” and “White” magic. The book is divided into two sections: one in which the author joins a “black magic” group and the other in which the author joins a sort of wiccan…

  • Review: Beard’s Confronting the Classics

    Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures, and Innovations Mary Beard This is a collection of Beard’s reviews and essays from a number of publications, including many from the New York Review of Books. Organized in rough chronological order from Greece to the present, it is a bit of a hodgepodge. But what a wonderful hodgepodge it…

  • Review: Colt’s Martial Bliss

    Martial Bliss.: The Story of The Military Bookman. Margaretta Barton Colt A self-published memoir by the woman who co-ran the Miltiary Bookman, one of the legendary specialty bookshops that used to dot Manhattan in the pre-amazon days. Competently written, it tells the story of a now disappearing world of small used bookstores, staffed and frequented…

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    Review: Beard and Henderson’s Classics

    Classics: A Very Short Introduction Mary Beard and John Henderson A short, but clever little book co-written by one of my favorite writers, Mary Beard. This is not really an overview of the substance of “Classics” (i.e. the works of the ancient world).  Rather, it is an overview of the way we think about the…

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    Review: Malcolm’s In the Freud Archives

    In the Freud Archives (New York Review Books Classics) Janet Malcolm An early Janet Malcolm book on the infighting among a group of scholars associated with the Freud Archives. This is a classic example of how a great journalist can turn a subject matter I care nothing about into a gripping read by finding the…

  • Review: Bittman’s Vegan Before Six

    VB6: Eat Vegan Before 6:00 to Lose Weight and Restore Your Health . . . for Good Mark Bittman I’ve written separately about my own efforts to follow the “Vegan Before Six” diet, so I’ll limit this to a review of the book. While you don’t need to read this to follow the VB6 guidelines,…

  • Review: Ayer’s The Long Race

    The Longest Race: A Lifelong Runner, An Iconic Ultramarathon, and the Case for Human Endurance Ed Ayers A lifelong runner uses his training, and running, of the JFK 50 miler as a way to ruminate on the nature of running, both as an activity and as a metaphor for political action. Ayers has been running…

  • Review: Fitzgerald’s Iron War

    Iron War: Dave Scott, Mark Allen, and the Greatest Race Ever Run Matt Fitzgerald In 1989 Mark Allen and Dave Scott, two of the greatest triathletes of all time, competed in what is still the closest, and my all measures, greatest Ironman world championship. This book is the story of those men, that race, and…