Tag: recommended for the enthusiast
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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…
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Review: The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz
The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz (trans. Joscelyn Godwin) Here’s one of the problems for the autodidact who follows his bliss this way and that, from one book to another, reading what he wants. He can end up, at 18, reading one of the foundational texts of western hermeticism without any real context, or real…
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Review: Charter’s The Portable Beat Reader
The Portable Beat Reader Ann Charters A collection of excerpts from many of the most important beat works and writers including Kerouac, Burroughs, Cassidy, and Ginsberg. I read this as a teenager eager to learn about the world outside the small Connecticut town in which I was raised, and boy did it deliver. Back then,…
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Review: Hamilton’s The Second Life of Nick Mason
The Second Life of Nick Mason Steve Hamilton Another Hamilton book, this one debuting a new series and a new brooding protagonist – Nick Mason: noble petty criminal forced to work for evil organized crime boss while valiantly attempting to hold onto his humanity and save from ruin a whole bunch of innocent people. This…
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Review: Hamilton’s A Cold Day In Paradise
A Cold Day In Paradise Steve Hamilton An above average crime thriller, the first in Steve Hamilton’s series featuring down on his luck, broken detective Alex McKnight. I picked this up because I read somewhere that Hamilton’s an underrated crime writer – I guess that’s true. Certainly better than the Baldacci’s of the world, but…
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Review: Itzler’s Living with a Seal
Living with a Seal: 30 Days of Training with the Toughest Man On The Planet Jesse Itzler Fun. Rich New Yorker hires famed navy seal and ultra-endurance athlete David Goggins to come live with him for a month and train him. Goggins agrees with the condition that Itzler agrees to follow his every instruction, no…
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Greece Over Rome: My Thoughts on Being Underwhelmed by the Aeneid
The Aeneid Virgil (Trans Fagles) In most things of the mind, Greece beats Rome. The Greeks philosophy is better, as are its dramas, and it epic poetry. While the Aeneid is perhaps the best piece of epic poetry Rome has to offer, Virgil was no Homer and this is no Iliad. That Homer’s superiority to…
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Review: Harris’s Ten Percent Happier
10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works–A True Story Dan Harris This one is on one hand a pretty no-nonsense introduction to “mindfulness” practice and on the other a slightly annoying memoir from a television anchor. I find it a…
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Book Review: Cline’s The Trojan War: A Very Short Introduction
The Trojan War: A Very Short Introduction Eric H. Cline The title says it all. This introduction is focused on the history of the war itself, and the changing nature of our knowledge of it, and doesn’t spend much time on the literary aspects of the works (Iliad, et al) which have arisen around the…
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Review: Carson’s Red Doc>
Red Doc> Anne Carson A bit too much. As deeply as I loved Autobiography of Red, and as badly as I wanted to like this this, Red’s kinda sorta sequel, Red Doc> was too avant garde for me. Ostensibly, this is the story of what happened to Geryon, the protagonist of the Autobiography, when he…
Milo and the Calf 