Category: Books
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Review: The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz
The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz (trans. Joscelyn Godwin) Here’s one of the problems for the autodidact who follows his bliss this way and that, from one book to another, reading what he wants. He can end up, at 18, reading one of the foundational texts of western hermeticism without any real context, or real…
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Review: Mondo2000’s Users Guide to the New Edge
Mondo2000s Users Guide to the New Edge R.U. Sirius, Rudy Rucker, Queen Mu Friends, now-a-days, it seems hopelessly naïve that the birth of the internet age would bring with it a techno utopia of virtual reality, direct democracy, and extensive leisure. But in the early 90s, to a certain set of California techno-utopians (and the…
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Review: Charter’s The Portable Beat Reader
The Portable Beat Reader Ann Charters A collection of excerpts from many of the most important beat works and writers including Kerouac, Burroughs, Cassidy, and Ginsberg. I read this as a teenager eager to learn about the world outside the small Connecticut town in which I was raised, and boy did it deliver. Back then,…
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Literature Reveals the World: Some Quick Thoughts on Finley’s The World of Odysseus
The World of Odysseus M.I. Finley A stunning work of social history which uses what we know about the historical time period which produced the Iliad and the Odyssey to help understand these two classics. We need to remember that even to homer, the events of the Iliad and Odyssey were ancient history. His codification…
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Review: Shah’s Pandemics
Pandemic: Tracking Contagions From Cholera to Ebola and Beyond Sonia Shah I’m not really a science guy, but I have thing for pandemics. There’s something about their lethal power, and how unaffected they are by the human misery they cause, that terrifies me. When I heard the good reviews of Shah’s social history of pandemics,…
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Review: Older’s Infomocracy
Infomocracy Malka Older A science fiction political thriller novel about elections. Meaning, a book written precisely for me. In the future, elections are done on a hyper-local level with major parties looking to piece together large numbers of small districts to achieve global parties. The system is run by a disinterested google-like corporation (Information) determined…
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Bibliography: Anne Carson
I don’t always love Anne Carson’s work. Autobiography of Red is one of my favorite books of contemporary poetry (can we call it that?) but Red Doc> was too much for me. But even when I don’t like an individual work, I love what I see to be her life’s project — connecting the classical…
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Review: Hamilton’s The Second Life of Nick Mason
The Second Life of Nick Mason Steve Hamilton Another Hamilton book, this one debuting a new series and a new brooding protagonist – Nick Mason: noble petty criminal forced to work for evil organized crime boss while valiantly attempting to hold onto his humanity and save from ruin a whole bunch of innocent people. This…
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Fathers and Sons: Some Thoughts on Coates’s The Beautiful Struggle
The Beautiful Struggle Ta-Neshi Coates The first book by one of America’s greatest public intellectuals. The Beautiful Struggle is a coming of age memoir, set in Baltimore and focusing primarily on Coates relationship with his fascinating, complicated father. If you’re interested in what Coates has to say, (and you should be) then you…
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Review: Hamilton’s A Cold Day In Paradise
A Cold Day In Paradise Steve Hamilton An above average crime thriller, the first in Steve Hamilton’s series featuring down on his luck, broken detective Alex McKnight. I picked this up because I read somewhere that Hamilton’s an underrated crime writer – I guess that’s true. Certainly better than the Baldacci’s of the world, but…
Milo and the Calf 