Milo and the Calf

Tag: books

  • Palmer’s Too Like the Lightning

    Too Like The Lightning Ada Palmer Too Like the Lightning is a strange book. At times, it is a difficult book. It is also a very, very good book. A work of science fiction, for sure (we’ve got flying cars, people) it’s also much more than that. It’s an attempt to transport enlightenment ideas about…

  • Influences on Delany’s Dhalgren

    The largest influences on the book that I am aware of, at any rate, were Michel Foucault (primarily Madness and Civilization, secondarily The Order of Things), John Ashbery’s poems The Instruction Manual (and the Richard Howard essay on Ashbery in Alone with America) and These Lacustrine Cities, G. Spencer Brown’s Laws f Form (given me…

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    Review: Fitzgerald’s 80/20 Running

    80/20 Running: Matt Ftizgerald Fitzgerald is an ace at taking a basic idea about endurance sports and turning it into a useful, if a bit padded book. Racing weight is about, well, weight and racing, and 80/20 is about the very popular (some would say ubiquitous) running methodology of running eight percent of your miles…

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    Review — Fitzgerald’s Racing Weight

    Racing Weight Matt Fitzgerald A diet book that isn’t a diet book. A straight forward, no bullshit, guide to getting your weight to a level at which you will perform optimally at endurance events. The diet advice here is not revolutionary (eat whole foods, avoid bad shit as much as you can, don’t over eat,…

  • Review: Saawadi’s Woman At Point Zero

    Woman at Point Zero Nawal El Saawadi A novel based on Saadawi’s interviews with a n imprisoned psychiatric patient, Women at Point Zero is important, deeply moving and horrific. I’m not going to lie to you, this one isn’t easy to get through. Saadawi’s protagonist life is an unending series of horrors committed against either…

  • Review: Carr’s Bad

    Bad: The Autobiography of James Carr James Carr I’ve read scores of memoirs from radical political activists. This one, by James Carr, is among the best. Carr was a career criminal, in and out of jail until he ended up in Soledad prison and befriended George Jackson, became politicized, and became one of Jackson’s top…

  • Review: Lukas’s Big Trouble

    Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America J. Anthony Lukas I’m always surprised more people haven’t read this book about the assassination of Idaho’s former governor and the class war in the courtroom battle that grew out of it. It’s a well written, fast…

  • Review: Sinclair’s White Chapel: Scarlet Tracings

    White Chapel: Scarlet Tracings Iain Sinclair An odd but of work, this novel by poet, bookseller, novelist and pyscho-geographer Iain Sinclair was one of the main inspirations for Alan Moore’s From Hell. It’s a pretty out-there novel that is part investigation into the Jack the Ripper murders, part fictionalized pseudo memoir of life amongst the…

  • Review: Marable’s Malcolm X

    Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention Manny Marable A deeply researched, clearly written, important work of scholarship on one of the most fascinating figures in modern American history. Like many, I read Malcolm X’s autobiography in high school and was deeply effected by the story of the hustler turned political activist. I’ve encounter Malcolm’s ideas…

  • Taking Trash Culture Seriously: Kerekes and Slater’s Killing for Culture

    Now this one, guys, this one was weird. An well researched, well written, investigation into the so-called death on film focusing primarily on the “mondo” films phenomenon of the 1970s and 80s. If you’re of a certain age, you remember these collections of deaths and other gruesome scenes, allegedly caught on film. This stuff was…