Milo and the Calf

Tag: recommended

  • Review: Winslow’s The Cartel

    The Cartel  Don Winslow The sequel to Winslow’s page-turner Power of the Dog, the Cartel takes our tale of the Mexican drug trade to the present day and includes the rise of the ultra-violent new breed of narcos such as the Zetas. In writing and character development, perhaps a better book than Power of the…

  • Review: Buettner’s Blue Zones

    The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest Dan Buettner The first book in the Blue Zone empire. Though it is at times silly, this is a must read for anyone interested in longevity. If you’ve been living under a rock, let me briefly explain the conceit of this…

  • Review: Winslow’s Power of the Dog

    The Power of the Dog Don Winslow Wow, what a read. A top-notch crime writer does the research and takes the time to understand the modern origins of the drug war in Mexico, then tells that story through the lives of petty criminals, cartel bosses, DEA agents and regular people caught up in the drug…

  • Review: Chopra’s Shapeshifter

    Shapeshifter: The Evolution of a Cricket Fan (awaiting publication) Samir Chopra For many sports fans, myself included, our personal lives are intertwined with the fortunes of millionaires we have never met. I remember watching, with my father, when Brett Favre threw for four hundred yards the night after his own father died. I remember the…

  • Review: Kraus’s I Love Dick

    I Love Dick (Semiotext(e) / Native Agents) Chris Kraus   A strange book; it unsettled me. Now, months after finishing it, I’m still not sure what I thought of it.   The basic premise is well known – Kraus, filmmaker, theorist, and wife of French theorist Sylvere Lotringer has a short encounter with a theorist…

  • 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: Rankine’s Citizen

    Citizen: An American Lyric Claudia Rankine I’m really not a poetry guy, but so many brilliant friends recommended this, I had to give it a go. So, so glad I did. A gut wrenching meditation on American racism both systemically, and personally this book had me in awe. Rankine not only makes brutal point after…

  • 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…

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    Review: Malcolm’s In the Freud Archives

    In the Freud Archives (New York Review Books Classics) Janet Malcolm An early Janet Malcolm book on the infighting among a group of scholars associated with the Freud Archives. This is a classic example of how a great journalist can turn a subject matter I care nothing about into a gripping read by finding the…

  • Review: Bittman’s Vegan Before Six

    VB6: Eat Vegan Before 6:00 to Lose Weight and Restore Your Health . . . for Good Mark Bittman I’ve written separately about my own efforts to follow the “Vegan Before Six” diet, so I’ll limit this to a review of the book. While you don’t need to read this to follow the VB6 guidelines,…