Category: Books
-
2022 My Year In Books
Another year, another 52 books. I spent nearly half of 2022 living in other people’s homes, which was weird and kind of unsettling, but I also read some absolute bangers. If you actually read this whole thing, you’ll probably notice some themes. More books about nature, less poetry, more trashy fiction, less literary fiction. As…
-
2020: My Year In Books
What a year, friends, what a year. At the start of the year I had big plans both intellectually and physically, but in the end, I ended up holding on and finishing, even if just barely, 52 books. Here they are, with some of the best highlighted. Best Fiction Book Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison…
-
Brakeley’s Skiing with Henry Knox
Skiing with Henry Knox: A Personal Journey Along Vermont’s Catamount TrailSam Brakeley I have a real soft spot for books like this. Young dude decided to take on doing the Catamount Trail, (a cross country ski route that runs the length of Vermont) in a single push. Ostensibly he’s doing this to give himself time…
-
Eyre’s Death in Mud Lick
Death in Mud Lick: A Coal Country Fight Against the Drug Companies that Delivered the Opioid Epidemic Eric Eyre The worst book I read this year. A full of himself reporter takes the destruction wrought on West Virginia by big pharma and attempts to turn it into a hero story about himself. In almost every case…
-
Cooper’s We Keep the Dead Close
We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of SilenceBecky Cooper True crime for fancy folks. An investigation into the murder of a student at Harvard in the 1960s that turns into an investigation into the way power works. The way Harvard, men, and the state all use power against…
-
Calle’s True Stories
True StoriesSophie Calle Been sitting on my shelves for years and years. So happy I finally took down this little book of aphorisms and photos (both original and found) by the wonderfully bizarre performance artist / writer Sophie Calle. I have followed Calle’s work for decades. It has often focused on the contradictions of desire,…
-
Odell’s How To Do Nothing
How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention EconomyJenny Odell I may be the last dad in brownstone Brooklyn to read this book, but I’m glad I did. It lives up to the hype. The central premise you probably already know – there is power in slowing down, in paying attention, in resisting the never ending…
-
von Straten’s In Search of Lost Books
In Search of Lost Books: The forgotten stories of eight mythical volumesGiorgio von Straten, Simon Carnell (Translator) A wonderful little book chronicling the stories of books lost to time. By “lost books” von Straten isn’t referring to rare books, or even books we know were published, but no longer have. Here’s he’s talking about the…
-
Sibley’s Birding Basics
Sibley’s Birding Basics: How to Identify Birds, Using the Clues in Feathers, Habitats, Behaviors, and SoundsDavid Allen Sibley David Sibley, is the author of perhaps the most popular guide to birding in the U.S. Sibley’s Guides. Gorgeously illustrated with his own renderings and written in a wonderfully dense, descriptive way, my Sibley is one of…
-
Schultheis Bone Games
Bone Games: Extreme Sports, Shamanism, Zen, and the Search for Transcendence Rob Schultheis This one is a pretty deep cut in the world of endurance literature. The premise is that extreme sports (mountaineering, ultra endurance events, etc) are a modern, western, form of vision quests. An attempt by domesticated, bored, largely affluent, westerners to reconnect with…
Milo and the Calf 