Milo and the Calf

Tag: book reviews

  • Review: Seistad’s One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway

    One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway Anse Seiestad We’re only two weeks into 2016, but I think I may have my nonfiction book of the year in Asne Seierstad’s story of the Anders Breivik’s terrorist attack/mass murder in Norway. Do you remember that one? Breivik was a ultra-nationalist,…

  • 2016: My Reading Goals

    2015 was another pretty good year for my reading. 52 books, half by women. I’ll take it. This year, I have two overarching goals: to dig deeper in a subject matter, and to increase the diversity of my reading further. Here’s how I plan to achieve that: Read fifty two books. I’ve done this now…

  • Review: Lewis’s the Big Short

    The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine Michael Lewis It took the movie coming out for me to finally read this great book on the guys who figured out the subprime crash before the subprime crash. I’m not sure why I didn’t read this earlier, I’m a fan of both Michael Lewis and books skewering…

  • Review: Winslow’s The Cartel

    The Cartel  Don Winslow The sequel to Winslow’s page-turner Power of the Dog, the Cartel takes our tale of the Mexican drug trade to the present day and includes the rise of the ultra-violent new breed of narcos such as the Zetas. In writing and character development, perhaps a better book than Power of the…

  • Review: Buettner’s Blue Zones

    The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest Dan Buettner The first book in the Blue Zone empire. Though it is at times silly, this is a must read for anyone interested in longevity. If you’ve been living under a rock, let me briefly explain the conceit of this…

  • Review: Winslow’s Power of the Dog

    The Power of the Dog Don Winslow Wow, what a read. A top-notch crime writer does the research and takes the time to understand the modern origins of the drug war in Mexico, then tells that story through the lives of petty criminals, cartel bosses, DEA agents and regular people caught up in the drug…

  • Review: Kraus’s I Love Dick

    I Love Dick (Semiotext(e) / Native Agents) Chris Kraus   A strange book; it unsettled me. Now, months after finishing it, I’m still not sure what I thought of it.   The basic premise is well known – Kraus, filmmaker, theorist, and wife of French theorist Sylvere Lotringer has a short encounter with a theorist…

  • Review: Smith’s Just Kids

    Just Kids Patti Smith For the first fifty pages, I wasn’t sure about this one, but then something clicked and I couldn’t put this down. By now you know that this is the story of Smith’s early adulthood and her relationship Robert Mapplethorpe. The books starts with Smith as a child in New Jersey and…

  • 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…

  • 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…