Category: Books
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Kelman’s How Late It Was, How Late
How Late It Was How Late James Kelman When I was twenty, I lived in Berkeley California and worked as a tele-fundraiser for a number of large nonprofits. Yes, I was the guy calling to ask you to donate to the Sierra Club. My co-workers were an incredibly eclectic mix of punks, artists, ex-cons, and…
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Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children
Midnight’s Children Salman Rushdie Can Rushdie write? Yes, he prose is beautiful, if too baroque at times for me. I read this over a decade ago, and there are scenes I can still remember clearly. Can he craft a compelling story? Yes, as this story of the transformation of India, and those who lived there,…
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Proulx’s The Shipping News
The Shipping News, E. Annie Proulx I read the Shipping News in 1997 when I was twenty-two years old. It is hard to articulate now the effect it had on me. It’s moving, its beautiful, and it’s the first time I self-consciously realized I was reading a literary novel. I’d read other serious novels before,…
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Hamilton’s The Secret Race
The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France Tyler Hamilton This is one of the best book on the culture of pro-cycling. It’s also one of the best books on the mechanics of doping, especially, in endurance sports, and on the psychology and pressure that can lead a good kid far…
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Goodwin’s Lords of the Horizon: A History of the Ottoman Empire
Lords of the Horizon: A History of the Ottoman Empire Jason Goodwin Jason Goodwin is perhaps best known as the author of a detective novel series set in Ottoman Istanbul and featuring eunuch detective named Yasim. I’ve read a couple of those books and enjoyed them enough to pick up his much more serious history…
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Bolano’s Nazi Literature in the Americas
Nazi Literature of the Americas, Roberto Bolano The first book I read by Bolano and it got me hooked. Ostensibly, a review of literature written by various Latin American fascists, it is, like much of work, occasionally funny, slightly surreal, and in the end disturbing and brilliant. One of these vignettes was expanded into…
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Raymond’s He Died With His Eyes Open
Dude, WTF did I read? He Died With His Eyes Open (Factory 1), Derek Raymond The first book in the Factory series of so called “exestensialist noir” following the nameless detective who works in the unsolved crimes division and sees the deepest underbelly of British society. In this book, he’s on the case of a…
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Fishkoff’s The Rebbe’s Army
The Rebbe’s Army: Inside the World of Chabad-Lubavitch, Sue Fishkoff “Excuse me sir, are you jewish?” If you live in New York and you look even remotely like an Ashkenazi jew, you’ve been asked this question. The people doing the asking are members Chabbad Lubavitcgh, the largest, most outwardly looking movement in Hasidic Judaism. This…
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Steve Bannon: A Reading List
This site’s mostly archives now. I’m writing fresh things over at Substack — come say hi: www.miloandthecalf.substack.com There’s a lot of talk about Steve Bannon being the intellectual force behind the Trump administration. With Harvard Business School and Goldman Sachs on his resume, he’s certainly a smart guy. He’s also profoundly dangerous if you…
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Poundstone’s Prisoner’s Dilemma
Prisoner’s Dilemma: John von Neumann, Game Theory, and the Puzzle of the Bomb William Poundstone Part biography of the genius John Von Neumann, part story of the development of game theory, and part history of the relationship between the academy and the defense department in the cold war era, this book (and everything else Poundstone…
Milo and the Calf 