Milo and the Calf

Tag: recommended

  • Review: Kang’s The Vegetarian

    The Vegetarian Han Kang Creepy. Super creepy. Disturbing. Interlocking stories revolving around an abused and disturbed women who turn to vegetarianism appears to instigate a series of events which destroy both her and her family. Of course, it isn’t actually her vegetarianism. It’s about the violence directed at her, the mental illness that violence (may?)…

  • Review: Bolano’s Distant Star

    Distant Star Roberto Bolano Perhaps my favorite Bolano book yet.* A spin off of one of the chapters in Nazi Literature in the America’s this is the story of psychopathic fascist poet and murder. It’s also the story of how we justify Chile under dictatorship, the politics of art, and what literature is. Like all…

  • Review: Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy

    Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis J.D. Vance The book all your Brooklyn bearded buddies and khaki clad D.C. contacts were talking about. Billed as your guide (from a Yale Law grad no less!) to what the hell is happening in the white working class of the rust belt, this…

  • Review: Bolano’s By Night In Chile

    By Night In Chile Roberto Bolano Considered by many to be one of, it not the, greatest work by the Chilean master, By Night In Chile is the reflections of a dying priest, with a literary bent, on the life he lived. The books that captivated him, the generals who, the fellow Chileans lost in…

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    Welch’s Winter in the Blood

    Winter in the Blood James Welch Brutal, haunting and beautifully written tale of life over a couple of weeks on a reservation, in Montana, in the 1970s. If you think such a setting would produce a sad tale of heartbreak, death, alcoholism and little hope, you’d be right. Much of this book is brutal in…

  • Review: Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time

    The Fire Next Time James Baldwin The latest in a long line of classics I should have read years ago. The latest in a series of reviews o books so important, so pivotal, that it’s absurd to try to write a review. Still, I’ll give it a go. This, Baldwin’s combination letter to his nephew…

  • Review Gonzales’s The Spitboy Rule

    The Spitboy Rule: Tales of a Xicana in a Female Punk Band Michelle Cruz Gonzales Ok, so I know Michelle, the author of this book, and some of the other members of Spitboy, the band at the center of this story. There was a time, a long long while ago, when we were all close.…

  • There Are Scenes He Describes That Still Haunt Me — Coogan’s On the Blanket

    On the Blanket: The Story of the IRA’s Dirty Protest Tim Pat Coogan If Tim Pat Coogan isn’t the world’s greatest authority on the I.R.A., he’s definitely on the short list. A reporter for years and year with close ties to catholic ghettos of Northern Ireland, he has the sources and knowledge few others can…

  • 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…

  • 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…