Milo and the Calf

Tag: books

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    Nelson’s The Red Parts

    The Red Parts: A Memoir of a Trial Maggie Nelson Maggie Nelson wrote a book called Jane: A Murder about the brutal murder of her aunt allegedly by a serial killer who was targeting women in Michigan in the late seventies. As she was finalizing the book, and getting ready to go on a book…

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    Nelson’s Jane: A Murder

    Jane: A Murder Maggie Nelson Maggie Nelson is one of my favorite writers. Her book the Argonauts knocked me on my ass. Its still one of my go-to gift books. I’ve read almost everything she has written and honestly, you can’t go wrong. But if you want to start somewhere really excellent, I suggest the…

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    Cline’s The Girls

    The Girls Emma Cline A novel about a cult leader, very much like Manson, and a woman, very much like Susan Atkins, who befriend / seduce a very young teenage girl and bring her into the dark side of the post-summer of love hippie land. Our hero, the very young teenage girl (Evie) is lost,…

  • Lewis’s The Fifth Risk

    The Fifth Risk Michael Lewis I’ll read anything Michael Lewis publishes, even the minor works, like this one that examines what happens in the institutions of government when the new leaders not only disdain the institutions, but are also entirely incompetent. A brisk narrative telling celebrating the important of bureaucrats, and the power they hold,…

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    Brown’s The Boys in the Boat

    The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics Daniel James Brown Dad literature in extremis. Which usually isn’t something that turns me off, but this time, it was all just a bit too much bootstrapping, a bit too much greatest generation propaganda, a bit too…

  • Winslow’s The Force

    The Force Don Winslow Don Winslow if not the best crime writer alive, definitely top five. His pacing is always full speed ahead, but without sacrificing character develop, or whip smart dialogue. His two books on the rise of Mexican drug cartels, The Power of the Dog and the Cartel are deeply researched and utterly…

  • Delany’s Atheist in the Attic

    The Atheist in the Attic Samuel Delany I am a huge fan of the work of Samuel Delany and I’m convinced that a hundred years from now, he’ll be one of the most studied writers of our time. This is a minor work made of two pieces, a short novella that imagines the conversations between…

  • Smith’s Don’t Call Us Dead

    Don’t Call Us Dead: Poems Danez Smith A slim, early volume by one of my favorite working poets. You can see the visceral power and honesty here, (some of the poems here are repeated in the more comprehensive Don’t Call Us Dead) but perhaps it isn’t as fully developed as I think it is in…

  • Hayes’s American Sonnets to My Once and Future Assassins

    American Sonnets to My Once and Future Assassins Terrance Hayes Another gut punch of a book of poetry by a black man. Viscerally moving sonnets about race, love and America.  Most pointedly what its like to reflect backwards, and think ahead, in Trump’s America. For many years, I didn’t read much poetry, but lately, I’m…

  • Boyarin’s The Jewish Gospels

    The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ Daniel Boyarin Daniel Boyarin is one the most interesting scholars of rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity working today. He’s also, usually, an incredibly dense and academic writer. I read, and loved, his book Borderlands, but I’m also not sure I understood it. The Jewish Gospels is…