author: Viktor E. Frankl

name: Steev

average rating: 4.33

book published: 1946

rating: 5

read at: 2014/09/08

date added: 2014/09/10

shelves: own-it, spirit-self

review:
This book is everything everyone praises it for and more. Highly recommended. I found it highly inspiring, moving, heartbreaking, and wise. Enough said.

author: Roberto Bolaño

name: Steev

average rating: 4.35

book published: 2004

rating: 5

read at: 2009/01/02

date added: 2014/07/04

shelves: novels, own-it

review:
Pretty amazing book. Bolaño is a first-rate novelist. I almost feel like "The Savage Detectives" was better though.

author: Seth Tobocman

name: Steev

average rating: 4.29

book published: 1990

rating: 5

read at: 1999/01/01

date added: 2014/02/21

shelves: art, own-it, politics, spirit-self

review:

author: John Summers

name: Steev

average rating: 4.00

book published: 2014

rating: 5

read at: 2014/06/07

date added: 2014/06/08

shelves: politics, fun, own-it

review:
Took me awhile this time, but the issue does not disappoint. Highlights are the piece by David Graeber about play, the Susan Faludi article on feminism, and the excellent take-down of Vice magazine.

author: Harper Lee

name: Steev

average rating: 4.29

book published: 1960

rating: 5

read at: 2011/06/22

date added: 2014/05/16

shelves: novels, politics

review:
Absolutely totally deserving all the praise and sales that it has received. One of the best novels ever, hands down.

author: Gabriel García Márquez

name: Steev

average rating: 3.81

book published: 1986

rating: 4

read at: 2009/10/25

date added: 2014/07/28

shelves: politics, filmmaking, fun, own-it

review:
This is a short but fascinating true story of a film director from Chile, exiled after the Pinochet coup, who sneaks back into the country after 12 years in order to do a documentary about the state of the nation. Despite its factual nature, Garcia Marquez narrates the book in a dramatic first person style and it is a distillation of an 18-hour interview he did with the filmmaker.

Oddly, nowhere in the book is there mention of the name of the film that Littin produced from the 105 thousand feet of footage he and his 5 crews shot in Chile over the course of a month or so. I looked it up on IMDB though and it's called "Acta General de Chile" - it doesn't look like there's an english version, unfortunately. But, it can be seen on Google Video here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?doc...#

At any rate, the book is a great snapshot at what Pinochet's regime did to Chile after just 12 years, and an empathetic look at the effect of exile on a creative and patriotic artist.

author: prole.info

name: Steev

average rating: 3.77

book published: 2011

rating: 5

read at: 2015/02/10

date added: 2015/02/24

shelves: politics, gentrification, own-it

review:
Excellent. Essentially a marxist analysis of the housing and construction industries, but a modern one. Includes an erudite chapter on Soviet Russia and why it wasn't really communism but was in fact just another form of state capitalism.

In addition to the smart writing, the graphics are brilliant. Some of them I feel like blowing up into poster size and wheatpasting around town.

author: Bret Easton Ellis

name: Steev

average rating: 3.82

book published: 1991

rating: 4

read at: 2014/11/16

date added: 2014/11/18

shelves: novels, own-it, fun

review:
This is an odd novel. It's a light-hearted, absurdist satire about rich people and New York and trendiness and fashion. But it's also a violent, misogynist horror story full of ultra-graphic, impossibly extreme gore and brutality. Oh and super graphic, porn-style sex scenes.

It's one of those books where I wondered often why I was still reading, and yet couldn't put it down.

Some things I really enjoyed about it:
1. One running gag is that the narrator is always mistaking people for other people, and in turn he's always being mistaken for others. Co-workers or acquaintances come up and greet him by other names, etc. It happens so often as to be this hilarious and biting commentary on modern alienation.

2. The anachronism of the time the book is set in. It's so clearly late-80s, it almost hurts, to read about the cordless phones, video rentals, answering machines and INXS playing at the clubs.

3. The porn-style sex scenes. Really just because they, along with the killing scenes, are such a stark contrast with the rest of the book, which is mostly vapid recountings of evenings spent dining at trendy eateries and the designer brands everyone is wearing.

Anyway. I hate to admit I've never read any other Bret Easton Ellis, but this makes me want to.

author: Marc Maron

name: Steev

average rating: 3.76

book published: 2013

rating: 5

read at: 2015/09/08

date added: 2015/09/08

shelves: memoir, own-it, fun, spirit-self, children

review:
I was already a big fan, so take this review with a grain of salt, but anyway: excellent stuff.

author: Jerry Stahl

name: Steev

average rating: 3.86

book published: 2015

rating: 4

read at: 2015/07/31

date added: 2015/07/31

shelves: children, fun, spirit-self, memoir, own-it

review:
For a lot of this book, I would reluctantly have to categorize Stahl's writing as basically "trying too hard." Occasionally he has a moment of real cleverness, or of real profundity. But too often he edges past those points and over the cliff of ham-fisted awkwardness.
I think if I wasn't myself a parent, and for that matter a quasi-OG Dad myself, I would only give this book 3, or even 2, stars. But there's enough stuff that resonates and is a smart take on things I've been living too, for it to be worth wading past the dumb bits. I think maybe Stahl's been in the Hollywood TV writing world for too long, or something. His writing here often feels like Groucho Marx trying to be Charles Bukowski - or maybe vice versa. I have felt for years like I would like to someday read his celebrated memoir "Permanent Midnight", but if it's the same level of craft as this, I might not get around to that.

Still, there are some great gems. He adequately conveys some of the experience of being a creative, "edgy", but aging, guy who finds himself, amazingly, a new father. If you don't care about the aging part, I think Neal Pollack's "Alternadad" is a better read. But Jerry Stahl has clearly been through the shit and come out the other side.