Tag: books
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Review: Friedman’s Who Wrote The Bible
Who Wrote the Bible Richard Elliott Friedman In the last couple of years, I’ve been making a real effort to engage more deeply with Torah study, and particularly with the weekly parshas.* This year, after coming across what seemed like a contradiction in Genesis, I asked a rabbi friend what to make of it. “Do…
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Review: Manchette’s The Prone Gunman
The Prone Gunman Jean-Patrick Manchette Poor kid from the wrong side of town falls in the rich, gorgeous, popular girl. Embarrassed by his humble origins and desperate to make her happy, he tells her he is leaving town to make his fortune and will be back in ten years for her. This being a novel…
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Review: Manchette’s Nada
Nada Jean-Patrick Manchette God I loved this little book. In post 1968 Paris a bunch of anarchists of varying levels of commitment plot to take an American ambassador hostage. It doesn’t go well, for anyone. The violence is nearly nonstop and none of the characters is particularly likeable. Still I couldn’t put it down. This…
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Review: Smith’s Be Recorder
Be Recorder Carmen Gimenez Smith Contemporary poetry can be very hit or miss for me. If the writers voice connects with me, it can resonate in ways literature doesn’t (see Danez Smith, Morgan Parker, Ilya Kaminsky) but if it doesn’t connect in the first few poems, generally I’m lost. Smith is clearly a talented writer…
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Review: Kaminsky’s Deaf Republic
Deaf Republic Ilya Kaminsky This little book of poems is stunning. In a straightforward voice it tells the story of a town that goes silent in the face of the atrocities of an occupying force. Illustrated with simple drawing of hand signals the towns people use to communicate, the book is both odd and deeply…
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Review: Bett’s Felon
Felon: Poems Reginald Dwayne Butts I work at a criminal justice non profit and day in day out I try to make the criminal justice system in New York City a little smaller, a little fairer, a little more humane. That work can often be technical, and too often, we put distance between ourselves and…
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Review: Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn
Motherless Brooklyn Jonathan Lethem I bought Motherless Brooklyn right when it came out and then immediately leant it to a friend who soon after became a hopeless junkie. I never saw the book again. But this year, without a book at the New Haven train station, I picked it up again, and blazed through it…
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Review: Sontag’s Reborn
Reborn:Journals and Notebooks 1947-1963 Susan Sontag The first in the collected journals of Susan Sontag edited by her son. I’ve long been fascinated by Sontag, the person, even if much of her work hasn’t resonated with me. Her endless curiosity, her almost obsessive need to read more, see more, hear more, is an inspiration to…
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Review: Holiday’s Stillness Is The Key
Stillness Is The Key Ryan Holiday Ryan Holiday is loved by tech bro culture, and largely responsible for the resurgence of interest in Stoicism by a certain type of middle age white dude (one of whom is me). His books follow a formula – take basic life advice and illustrate it with life lessons from…
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Review: Keita’s Brief Evidence of Heaven
Brief Evidence of Heaven: Poems from the Life of Anna Douglas M. Nazadi Keita This is a book of poetry written in the voice of Anna Douglass, the wife of Frederick Douglas. Its an interesting idea, Anna was Douglas’s life from the time he was a fugitive slave until her death when Douglass was the…
Milo and the Calf 