Milo and the Calf

Tag: recommended

  • Brandes’ The Orchard

    The Orchard Yochi Brandes A fictionalize portrayal of the life of Rabbi Akiva, told from the perspective of his loving, but long suffering wife. Akiva is a luminary of early rabbinic Judaism and one of the central figures in the Talmud. He was, allegedly, a simple Shepard, who won the heart of the daughter of…

  • Nguyen’s The Sympathizer

    The Sympathizer Viet Thanh Nguyen There are novels that when you’re reading them you can tell that the autor agonized over every word, thought deeply about every plot point, knew intimately every character. You can tell that the book is more than a work of fiction, its an attempt to tell something true and real…

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    Bonne’s New Rules for Wine

    New Rules for Wine: A Genuinely Helpful Guide to Everything You Need to Know John Bonne Widely thought of as one of the best books on wine in the last decade, this one does not disappoint. A clear, concise, and approachable guide to drinking wine today. Filled with insights and tips that will be helpful…

  • Carreyrou’s Bad Blood

    Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies In a Silicon Valley Start Up John Carreyrou I have a real soft spot for the genre I call “Business Tell-Alls”. Books on rouge billionaires, hostel take overs, accounting scandals, I’m here for it all. And having read many, many of these books I can say with some authority that…

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    Wrights Why Buddhism is True

    Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment. Robert Wright This book is about much, much more than the truth of Buddhism. Yes, it convincingly makes the argument that the central tenet of Buddhism (i.e. there is no “you”) is true but it does so by marshalling the best that cognitive…

  • Book Review: Miller’s Song of Achilles

    The Song of Achilles Madeline Miller If you’ve read the Iliad (and you really should read the Iliad) you know the basic outlines of Achilles life and, if you really paid attention, you remember Patroclus, his friend and consort whose death finally brings Achilles out of his moping to wage war on the Trojans. Miller’s…

  • Kurshan’s If All The Seas Were Ink

    If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir  Ilana Kurshan This book has been making the rounds among many of my friends and family and people’s reactions are so stark, and so diametrically opposed. There are those who love this book, who relate to its extreme bookishness, to the authors attempts to come to grips…

  • Goodell’s The Water Will Come

    The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World Jeff Goodell We all know the world is warming, we all know this will change the way we live. Goodell’s book doesn’t break any ground there, but what is does do is give us a very terrifying, very sobering, look…

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    Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing

    Sing, Unburied, Sing Jesmyn Ward I read and loved Salvage the Bones, Ward’s first novel about a poor black and rural family preparing for hurricane Katrina. And I read, and cried, over her memoir Men We Reaped. But this, her latest about mothers and her children, about prison, about drugs, about race and violence and…

  • Fei’s The Invisibility Cloak

      The Invisibility Cloak Ge Fei Short novel set in contemporary China, ostensibly about love and high-end audio equipment. Really about a country grappling with mass hyper-urbanization, corruption, and huge wealth disparities. It plays out at first as a sort of surreal comedy, but quickly (the whole book is less than 200 pages) into a…