Milo and the Calf

Tag: books

  • 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…

  • Review: Beard’s Confronting the Classics

    Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures, and Innovations Mary Beard This is a collection of Beard’s reviews and essays from a number of publications, including many from the New York Review of Books. Organized in rough chronological order from Greece to the present, it is a bit of a hodgepodge. But what a wonderful hodgepodge it…

  • Review: Colt’s Martial Bliss

    Martial Bliss.: The Story of The Military Bookman. Margaretta Barton Colt A self-published memoir by the woman who co-ran the Miltiary Bookman, one of the legendary specialty bookshops that used to dot Manhattan in the pre-amazon days. Competently written, it tells the story of a now disappearing world of small used bookstores, staffed and frequented…

  • Review: Goodwin’s the Jannisary Tree

    The Janissary Tree Jason GoodwinFrom all the wonderful reviews this got, I have to admit I was expecting more from this mystery set during the waning days of the Ottoman Empire. Goodwin is a skillful writer, and he has an obvious love for Turkey and its culture, but the plot seemed hackneyed and the execution…

  • Review: Buekes’s Broken Monsters

    Broken Monsters (Reading Group Guide) Lauren Buekes Super well-done mystery novel set turned super-natural what-the-fuck. Wonderful characters including sketchy wanna-be youtube stars, troubled ex-cons, teens in over their heads, overworked cops and mentally ill artists all face unknowable something or other in post-industrial Detroit. Good fun. I picked this up not knowing what to expect…

  • Review: Nabokov’s The Defense

    The Defense Vladimir Nabokov This early Nabokov novel is not of the mindbending genius of later works like Pale Fire and Lolita, but it is still better than even the best work by many other writers. Nabokov is a brilliant stylist and imagines the world of his protagonist brillantly. The phrasing is sparse and compelling,…

  • Review: Goldberg’s the Goddess Pose

    The Goddess Pose: The Audacious Life of Indra Devi, the Woman Who Helped Bring Yoga to the West Michelle Goldberg A biography of the fascinating Indra Devi (born Eugenia Peterson), who began life as a displaced Russian and ended it as one of the most important Western Yoga teachers. Devi’s life is incredible. Her ability…

  • Review: Ignatius’s the Increment

    The Increment: A Novel David Ignatius David Ignatius is a true beltway insider. He writes for the Washington Post and he is a regular guest on Sunday morning talk show. However, unlike most beltway reporters, when he turns his hand to fiction, he can write a better than average spy thriller. By far Ignatius’ best…