Category Archives: Books/Media

Whiskey and Ashes is one of those rare books that provides value well beyond what its slim length suggests.

A collection of quotes from Ace of 80-Proof Oinomancy, one of the manosphere’s best-kept secrets, Whiskey and Ashes is 300 pithy one-liners spread out over a thin 64 pages. The book is designed in such a fashion that while you can plow through it quickly, without investing a whole lot of mental energy into it, most of Ace’s witticisms will stick with you long after you hit the last page on your Kindle.

This is one “bathroom book” that you’ll be returning to again and again.

Whiskey and Ashes is worth the Lincoln that Ace is charging for it because of its wisdom. Ace’s writing doesn’t spoonfeed you the facts or treat you like a retard who needs everything spelled out in 18-point font and bullet-point lists. While there are a few duds in the collection, they don’t diminish the impact of the book.

But just who the hell is Ace, anyway? Whiskey and Ashes has a brief foreword by our mutual friend Dr. Illusion, shedding light on this mystery man and his maxims:

In the years I have known Ace, he has always been there with sage advice when I needed it. He became the person I reached out to when life was kicking my ass. Whatever I was going through, he had been there and provided wise (but always cryptic, of course) words to make me approach the problem in a different light. One gem that I will always remember came when I talked to him about relationship problems. He said to me “Remember this, Doc. She doesn’t love you, and she isn’t having sex with you. She loves an idea of you, and she’s fucking that idea or image of you. If you want a deep personal connection, get a dog.”

From there, the book launches into Ace’s “avowals,” a collection of short quips on everything from women to civilizational decline to random miscellany:

It would appear that men aren’t entitled to sex; women aren’t entitled to safety. One might be led to believe that fact brought us together.

Remember, if it has tits or tires you’re going to have trouble with it eventually.

What makes this world tragic is this fact: One can be great or one can be grateful. Never both simultaneously.

Ace’s writing is powerful not just because of what he says but what he doesn’t say. His jibes are characterized by what he calls “negative space,” the idea of making a point without explicitly stating what the point is. This gives Whiskey and Ashes a permanence beyond its seeming brevity. You’ll read a few of Ace’s quotes, close the book, turn them over in your head and eventually go, “Holy shit! NOW I get it!”

How many books inspire you to keep thinking about them long after you’ve put them away?

My problems with Whiskey and Ashes are two. One, the book needs a better edit job. The very first maxim in the book is missing a period, and too many of Ace’s sentences could have used more standardized punctuation. Second, the organization of the book seems a bit random. While the final maxim in the book will hit you like a bullet in the gizzard, Whiskey and Ashes seemingly skips around topics without any kind of rhyme.

That said, the mean length of each maxim is one sentence, so it’s not a huge deal.

Bottom line? Whiskey and Ashes is a must-buy, and potentially one of the most momentous books released this year. I don’t say that lightly, but Ace’s viewpoint and philosophy will benefit any man who takes the time to study them.

Click here to buy Whiskey and Ashes: An Inebriate’s Avowals, Maxims and Observations.

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Robert Koch is who I want to be when I grow up.

It’s odd watching people you’ve known for years end up in completely unexpected places. A little over two years ago, when Koch launched his now must-read blog 30 Days to X, he was an ambitious, if overenthusiastic kid trying on dozens of different hats. Computer programming, learning languages, hustling on Fiverr: Koch tried everything and anything in his quest to become a successful freelancer.

And now he’s succeeded.

In the process, Koch has debunked countless myths about making money online. How to Start a Big Money T-Shirt Business for Less Than $10 is a book that topples more lies about freelancing. In his mission to become self-reliant, Koch has jettisoned most of the conventional wisdom about “lifestyle design” and gone back to basics.

Big Money T-Shirt Business is a book everyone interested in freelancing should read, if not necessarily because they want to sell T-shirts for a living, but as a concise guide to business in the year 2015. Koch’s method ignores the generally accepted wisdom of using the Internet to line up scut work—the equivalent of trying to farm for gold nuggets in a cesspool—and emphasizes good old fashioned meatspace networking:

As I sat and I thought about this, a solution dawned on me. Instead of investing hundreds of dollars into flyers, most businesses would be better off handing out T-shirts to raise brand awareness. Very few people ever throw out a free shirt. Even fashion snobs wear them when they cut the grass or go to the gym. In addition, T-shirts turn the wearer into a walking billboard, advertising the business for all the world to see.

Big Money T-Shirt Business explains how just about anyone with the ability to engage in basic social interaction can make a side income from selling T-shirts. You don’t need graphic design skills (though they can help), you don’t need to plead with cheapass Internet clients, and you don’t need to sweat it. All you need is a bit of extra cash and some sales savvy:

Go into any sports bar on a game day and you’ll see hundreds of fans wearing their favorite team’s logo. Walk around town for half an hour and witness all the people wearing shirts that support some business or event. And go spend 20 minutes on any a college campus to marvel at all the students wearing “unique” T-shirts that support a popular cause.

Big Money T-Shirt Business is so helpful that I’ve actually decided to add a new hustle to my money-making empire based on its advice. While I can’t say anything right now, Koch’s suggestions are going a long way towards making my bank account grow.

Additionally, Koch has decided to use the release of Big Money T-Shirt Business to help out Kid Strangelove, who has been trying to raise awareness of cancer after being diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. All royalties Koch receives from the book’s sales will go to support cancer research at the Mayo Clinic.

Additionally, if you buy the book, you have an opportunity to win a $15 Amazon gift card. To enter the contest, simply submit a copy of your receipt to iboughttheebook [at] gmail [dot] com. The drawing will be held on June 1st.

While the book is a bit on the short side, How to Start a Big Money T-Shirt Business for Less Than $10 is a must-buy for anyone interested in making a bit of money on the side. It’s concise, to-the-point and can pay for itself with as little as one T-shirt sale.

Click here to buy How to Start a Big Money T-Shirt Business for Less Than $10.

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Reading Pantheon, the sophomore effort from my Return of Kings colleague Quintus Curtius, is like drinking a fine wine. My impulse whenever I get a glass of alcohol in my hand is to shotgun it, and Pantheon goes down as easy as a shot of Tito’s; Quintus’ calm, erudite-yet-digestible prose made thumbing through the book a breeze.

But if you just guzzle this glass of Pinot noir, you’ll miss out on a ton of flavor.

Pantheon is a deceptively complex book, full of nuances and observations that require a close reading to notice. While it presents itself as a collection of loosely-linked essays, similarly to his previous book Thirty Seven, Pantheon shows Quintus continuing to develop as a writer and thinker, moving out of his comfort zone into uncharted waters. The book is absolutely worth buying if you enjoyed Thirty Seven; if you haven’t, it’s still just as sweet.

Pantheon is anchored by the historical-cum-philosophical essays that Quintus is best known for, with analyses on great men of history such as Douglas Mawson, Miguel de Cervantes, and Hans Tofte. What distinguishes this book from Thirty Seven is Quintus adding tales of his own life to the mix:

Marriages for companionship should be undertaken only when you have known her for a long time, and have investigated all aspects of her character. A written prenuptial agreement should be arranged. All legal aspects of what you are doing should be clear to you. Nothing will protect you completely, of course, but at least you can have some firewalls in place to put her on notice that you are aware of your rights. Nothing in life is risk-free. There are no guarantees of anything. At some point, one must do the best one can and trust to Fate.

The book opens with an anecdote from the life of Howard Carter, the British Egyptologist who discovered the tomb of King Tut in 1922. Quintus’ essays blend historical recitation with narrative intensity, akin to Steven Pressfield in Gates of Fire: even when he’s discussing obscure philosophy, there’s rarely a dull moment. Aside from a few sluggish moments, such as “The Heart of Plotinus,” a dissection of Neoplatonism and Plotinus’ Enneads, I found it near-impossible to put the book down.

Where Pantheon comes into its own is when Quintus inserts himself into the mix. His way of making his point without coming off as preachy or didactic is one of the book’s greatest assets, as his historical and philosophical analyses worm their way into your brain. More than once, I found myself doubling back to re-read essays, my eyes scanning my Kindle in search of all the hidden meanings:

You are sensitive to, and responsive to, her moods. Remember that you are not entitled to anything. As men, we often forget just how different the woman’s world is from ours. On a recent date, a girl chanced to show me as an amusement the avalanche of texts she had received from some recent Tinder matches. I was disgusted to see text after text of groveling obsequiousness, photos of genitalia, and inept attempts at conversation. The point is that attractive women are constantly beset by clumsy approaches in one form or another; and out of necessity, they need to hone their filtration systems in order to ensure that only the best candidates receive carnal admission.

It’s the combination of personal and historical anecdote that gives Pantheon much of its impact. Any egghead can bloviate about the giants of history, and any self-obsessed idiot can blather about himself: it takes a certain skill to meld the two into a compelling narrative. In particular, the chapter “Turning the Tables,” a brief tale about a friend of Quintus’, is moving and poignant:

“But the judge believed me. The judge gave him ninety days to serve in a juvenile detention center. But I never did get my phone back. But life is like that sometimes. But we turned the tables on them. We made them think twice about doing something like that again. Sometimes in life, even when you are going to lose, you have to do something. Anything.

There are two notable problems with Pantheon. The first is, once again, the organization. While not as seemingly random as Thirty Seven, Quintus’ essays don’t appear to be ordered in a logical fashion. Secondly, the essay format itself makes the book feel disconnected at points. It’s the difference between listening to a album versus a greatest hits compilation: the underlying structure isn’t as strong.

I’d love to see Quintus tackle a novel—or a unified philosophical tract—one of these days.

Ultimately, though, I’m just nitpicking. As a follow-up work, Pantheon is Quintus Curtius at his best. If you’ve enjoyed his previous work, you need to buy this book; if you haven’t, it’s a fine place to start.

Click here to buy Pantheon: Adventures in History, Biography and the Mind.

Read Next: Thirty Seven: Essays on Life, Wisdom and Masculinity by Quintus Curtius

How the hell is Christopher Kavanagh still alive?

Mad Outta Me Head, the latest book from Expat Chronicles‘ Colin Post, would border on being unbelievable if it wasn’t so well-researched. A biography of Christopher Kavanaugh (aka “the Mick”), a close friend of Colin’s who figured prominently in his articles, it follows Kavanaugh’s life from his beginnings as a juvenile delinquent to his life deep in the criminal underworlds of Colombia and his native Ireland. It’s exhaustive, engaging and one hell of a ride.

But how is this guy not dead?

From beginning to end, Kavanaugh goes through so many near-death experiences that it’s a wonder he survived long enough to tell his story. He reminds me of Mark Zolo, if Zolo was a petty criminal who couldn’t keep away from the China white. If you’re looking for a smartly researched and enthralling tale of drug abuse and adventure, Mad Outta Me Head is a must-buy.

Mad Outta Me Head is written in a somewhat detached style, akin to Peter Robb’s book A Death in Brazil. The book follows Kavanaugh’s life, starting with his youth in sixties/seventies-era Ireland, a time of violence and poverty. Virtually every page of the book hits you with some kind of “What the FUCK?” moment, even the chapters where Kavanaugh is a little boy:

I didn’t know what I was feelin’ but he’d be down there suckin’ my little prick, and tellin’ me to piss on him. I didn’t know the sexual implications. I didn’t know what was goin’ on. I was goin’ down there to be punished and here he is, genuflectin’ in front of me. Where the whole Catholic Church and the whole fuckin’ Catholic Ireland was tellin’ me I had to genuflect in front of him, and he’d be doin’ the reverse to me.

Mad Outta Me Head is largely written from a third-person point of view, albeit with frequent quotes from news articles (many of which are about Kavanaugh’s exploits), encyclopedia entries, and Kavanaugh’s own words. Colin’s dispassionate, journalistic tone might seem like it would suck the life out of the story, but he approaches his subject matter with the right amount of detachment and involvement: I devoured the book at top speed.

Of course, Kavanaugh’s antics were the number one reason I kept reading.

It’s almost like this guy has no concept that he is mortal and that his life might end. Throughout the book, he does everything from stealing a bus and crashing it, to muling drugs between Ireland and Colombia, to getting in scrapes with prison toughs and somehow makes it out alive every time. He gets addicted to heroin, kicks it, becomes an alcoholic, kicks that, and ekes out a living in Bogota during the period in which it was one of the most dangerous cities in the world:

Christopher and Caspetero ran at him from opposite sides. Niche could not put up much resistance before taking stabbings from both of his attackers. Christopher says blood flew in all directions as they pounded away with their knives on Niche’s chest, stomach , arms, and shoulders. Christopher stabbed and stabbed, but Niche’s jackets were preventing the knives from penetrating too deep. So he and Caspetero kept stabbing. They left Niche on the ground hemorrhaging blood.

Mad Outta Me Head also dives into Kavanaugh’s experiences with Colombian women, which had me doubled over in laughter:

She became a fuckin’ bitch. She plunked herself down and kinda, ‘I’m not movin’. You wanna get me out you have to kick me out.’ She wouldn’t do any fuckin’ house cleanin’. She wouldn’t get outta bed. Puttin’ on a big fuckin’ face every time I saw her. Makin’ problems, inventin’ problems. Instead of getting up and doin’ what you’re supposed to do, she wouldn’t do it.

Colin’s book is also a great work of history and cultural anthropology. He frequently interweaves anecdotes about Irish and Colombian history into the narrative, allowing you to place Kavanaugh’s life in the greater cultural context. Some of the most enjoyable segments of the book don’t even discuss Kavanaugh at all, but are the ones that talk about the Provisional IRA’s antics in seventies-era Ireland or the civil war in Colombia. This makes Mad Outta Me Head a great read if you’re interested in Irish and/or Colombian history.

Unfortunately, the book isn’t perfect.

My biggest issues with Mad Outta Me Head is the amateurish way its references are laid out. Instead of organizing the news articles and web pages he refers to with endnotes, Colin just copy and pastes URLs directly into the text itself. Not only does this look sloppy, the URLs themselves are useless unless you’re reading the book on a tablet or computer: my Kindle Touch’s browser is an absolute piece of shit.

The second problem with Colin’s book is the same one that afflicts most indie books: slipshod editing. While not bad by any means, there are more typos and awkwardly phrased sentences then I would like. This extends to the subtitle: “Addiction and Underworld” sounds clunky and weird. Additionally, Kavanaugh’s excerpts, which are written in his Irish slang, are curiously missing apostrophes at the end of words like “fuckin'” and “cleanin’.”

But these are small potatoes. As a work of cultural anthropology and a biography of a truly fascinating man, Mad Outta Me Head is one of the best books I’ve read this year so far. If you enjoy both history and stories of crazy adventure, it’s absolutely worth your time.

Click here to buy Mad Outta Me Head: Addiction and Underworld from Ireland to Colombia.

Read Next: Bogota Brothel Tours: A Brief Career in Colombia’s Sex Trade by Colin Post

Herr F. is what happens when someone with extensive experience in one form of writing tries to tackle another without bothering to understand what separates the two.

I’ll freely admit I knew nothing about Momus (real name: Nicholas Currie) until Takimag editor Ann Sterzinger reviewed this novel of his last month. The guy’s an underground musician whose songs sound like the butt baby of Leonard Cohen and Michael Gira, blending references to Greek myth, continental philosophy and world history amid synth slams and his fey, Stuart Murdoch-esque vocals. And I’ll admit that Momus is pretty good at the music game, whether he’s imagining a dialogue between Dr. Faust and a patient, recasting the story of Pygmalion as a tale of rape and mind control, or pondering the philosophical implications of coming in a girl’s mouth.

Now if he could only learn how to write a novel.

Herr F. isn’t terrible, but it’s not great either. A re-imagining of the Faust legend in modern times, it shows flashes of brilliance but doesn’t come together as a coherent work. Reading it is like watching a magician who is so obsessed with proving how brilliant he is that he doesn’t notice his fly is undone. It’s worth checking out, if only because it’s free, but that’s pretty much it.

The problems with Herr F. begin in the very first chapter, as we’re introduced to the deceased Faust pondering his fate in what appears to be the same circle of Hell that Justine Jones was sent to:

I can confirm that nothing is very big. It seems to stretch out in all directions forever. Its texture is no-particular-texture, and its shape no-particular-shape. There isn’t any particular smell that I can identify, and the lighting seems to be even, without any particular source. There’s no sense of days or nights passing; no weeks, months, years, centuries, millennia, no flux or wane, no hot or cold, no winter or summer, no weather.

Wow, man. That’s like, really deep. Lemme grab a spliff and plug in my lava lamp.

Things get better in chapter two, where the plot—if you can call it that—gets rolling. Poor Herr Faust sells his soul to Mephistopheles in exchange for success as the author of The Book of Moss, a title as nauseatingly dull as it sounds. The deal leads to worldwide fame for Faust and a relationship with the art student-turned-painter Gretchen Mitsukoshi, then pain as he discovers that buying your way to the top isn’t as fun as it sounds:

In the fifth cube, the whizzing electrons of a colour TV image are making a kind of 3-D soap opera in which I am fucking Gretchen, who is simultaneously telling me that she has just accidentally killed her mother with the sleeping tablets I gave her by mistake, thinking they were birth-control pills. This news makes me lose my usual self-control and I orgasm inside Gretchen (under normal circumstances I practise coitus interruptus). After the commercial break we learn that Gretchen is pregnant, and her brother is furious about it. Mephisto and I, playing ourselves in the soap opera, slay Gretchen’s brother in a sword fight. Gretchen goes mad, drowns her newborn son and is sentenced for murder. I try unsuccessfully to rescue her from death row. She won’t come. But just before the episode ends, a booming voice from heaven announces that Gretchen has been saved. The audience breaks spontaneously into applause, because in the pilot the voice from heaven said the exact opposite.

The primary problem with Herr F. is that Momus is incapable of sitting still and developing an idea. He comes off like a more pretentious David Lynch: he gets a cool image in his head and writes it down with no concern for how it fits in the greater scheme of things. Each chapter in Herr F. seems only tangentially connected to the previous one, as if Momus sat down and wrote a series of separate stories, then realized after the fact that oh shit, these need to be linked somehow.

The effect is like mining for diamonds in a pile of manure.

The other problem with Herr F. is that Momus relies on postmodern trickery in lieu of developing a coherent plot… like every other hack “real” novelist of the past two decades. He inserts himself into chapter eight, referring to “Momus’s neglected 1997 album Ping Pong,” incorporates the book’s graphic designer Hagen Verlager as a character, and the final chapters of the book concern Faust writing the story of his life, coincidentally also called Herr F.:

The trip is a disaster. Takahashi does everything she can to prevent Aoi Yu and I from consummating our marriage, barging into the cabin we share at all hours of the night with a torch and camera. In Khabarovsk I’m bitten by an entire team of huskies when I attempt to cross the road against the red man. In Irkutsk some raw bear meat gives Aoi Yu a serious stomach infection and a local doctor forces her to eat the dried bodies of dead bees. At Buryatskaya the local police tell us our passports are not in order; we’re forced to spend a week in a stark tin shed, cold and gender-segregated. A cable from Tokyo clears things up, but we still have to wait another four days for the next Trans-Siberian Express. In Novosibirsk Takahashi goes off in search of medium-format camera film and I finally manage to get some quality time alone with Aoi Yu, only to find that she has vulvovaginitis, a condition which makes penetration impossible.

Momus’ website describes Herr F. as “a take on the Faust myth and on German-language experimental fiction.” Maybe I’m too much of a plebe to get it, but I’m just sick to death of these hacks thinking that all these neat tricks are an adequate substitute for a coherent plot and interesting characters. For Christ’s sake, Infinite Jest is nearly twenty years old! When are you imbeciles going to give it up?

It’s a shame because Herr F. has a lot of meat on its bones, whether it’s Faust trying to escape his phony fame by retreating to the mountains or dealing with his disgust for Gretchen’s false adoration. Had Momus put away the Adderall for a few weeks, he could have written something truly fantastic.

As it stands, Herr F. is like a haunted house ride: lots of memorable moments but no underlying structure.

As I said already, the book is free through Momus’ publisher, the German art collective Fiktion, so you don’t have to waste your hard-earned simoleons figuring out whether I’m right. Herr F. has some cool moments, but coming from a guy who is clearly learned and intelligent, it’s ultimately a gimmicky letdown.

Stick to the songwriting, Momus: the novel is an art form that eludes you.

Click here to download Herr F.

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The Saint Versus Scotland Yard is almost worth reading for its intro alone. My edition in the book includes a short note from Leslie Charteris, “Between Ourselves,” explaining his rationale for continuing to write Saint novels and savaging his critics:

But you may still read of the Saint. He will at least entertain you. For his philosophy—and mine—is happy. You will be bored with no dreary introspections about death and doom, as in the work of your dyspeptic little Russians. You will not find him gloating interminably over the pimples on his immortal soul, as do the characters of your septic little scribblers in Bloomsbury.

Hoo boy, that’s cold. While reading this, I thought back to Roy Campbell’s invective against the Bloomsbury Group and smiled.

The Saint Versus Scotland Yard (also known as The Holy Terror) is a collection of three interlinked stories, continuing the adventures of Simon Templar. As the title suggests, the stories involve the Saint running afoul of the law more so then usual as he exacts his particular variety of vigilante justice:

“He may be an amateur, as I keep telling you, but he’s efficient. Long before his house started to fall to pieces on me, he’d begun to make friendly attempts to bump me off. That was because he’d surveyed all the risks before he started in business, and he figured that his graft was exactly the kind of graft that would make me sit up and take notice. In which he was darned right. I just breezed in and proved it to him. He told me himself that he was unmarried; I wasn’t able to get him to tell me anything about his lawful affairs, but the butcher told me that he was supposed to be ‘something in the City’—so I acquired two items of information. I also verified his home address, which was the most important thing; and I impressed him with my own brilliance and charm of personality, which was the next most important. I played the perfect clown, because that’s the way these situations always get me, but in the intervals between laughs I did everything that I set out to do. And he knew it—as I meant him to.”

Overall, The Saint Versus Scotland Yard is another good Saint book and worth buying if you’re read previous books in the series.

Click here to buy The Saint Versus Scotland Yard.

Read Next: Enter the Saint by Leslie Charteris

Welcome to the Divide… is a first for me: a book that is completely unreviewable.

I can’t say it’s a good book, but I can’t say it’s bad, either. .S.P. Daley’s (that’s not a typo: his pen name has that extra period) debut novel is a dense digression on individuality, collectivism and dystopia, written in squid-ink prose and stretching on for nearly 400 pages. Daley sent me a copy on Aaron Clarey’s advice; Clarey loved it, but going to a guy like him for reading recommendations is like asking a teetotaler about craft brews.

Welcome to the Divide… is the most impenetrable novel I’ve ever read. The closest comparison I can make is to Beyond the Bush, the schizophrenic political satire-cum-80’s-movie-rehash squeezed out by Ann Sterzinger’s label Hopeless Books, but that novel had waaaaaay better pacing. I can’t review Daley’s book because I honestly don’t understand it. I can’t grok the style, I can’t grasp the ideas, and I’m not going to pan a book that was clearly written for people more intelligent than myself.

The only advice I can give is to read the book for yourself.

Welcome to the Divide…’s premise, as much as I can tell, concerns a “drone” on the cusp of self-awareness. The initial books concern some kind of control facility staffed by fellow drones lacking any concept of self-identity. The thrust of Divide’s plot concerns S., the protagonist, evolving from a mere drone into a sapient being independent of the hive mind:

After being continually accosted by Our Sssupervisssor’s failed attempts to punish them, the other drones became increasingly and openly disdainful towards Our Sssupervisssor… Soon they learned that slurred mocking of Our Sssupervisssor was permissible, provided it wasn’t done in the presence of non-security-drones… These acts of retaliation became more and more prevalent…

Daley’s prose style is reminiscent of Thomas Pynchon, less pretentious but just as impenetrable. All the book’s sentences end in Célinean ellipses, and he also has an annoying habit of using “etc” repeatedly. While these sound like idiotic gimmicks, Daley’s tight planning shows that these are deliberate stylistic choices.

Unfortunately, they also make the book difficult to comprehend.

I read Welcome to the Divide… all the way through and even re-read several sections in an attempt to understand what was going on, but the book had me lost. It’s not that Daley is deliberately trying to be obtuse as so many postmodern writers are, but his writing style and the way he presents his ideas left me scratching my head. The book constantly drowns you in an ocean of philosophical digressions and asides, giving you no time to come up for air:

As discussions over the particulars were being conducted, the Commanding-figure suddenly broke in, halting the others’ speech… The Commanding-figure’s voice ordered one of the other figures to proceed to the barrels, and count the number of them remaining… I remained frozen in my place, as a figure dashed over to these barrels to quantify how many were present… When the tarp was ripped away from the barrels, it seemed that I would soon be counted out as well… By the night’s darkness or some miraculous blunder, they remained oblivious of my presence…

I don’t want to pan Welcome to the Divide…, mainly because I think the problem isn’t so much the book itself as it is my interpretation of it. I’m sure that if I went back and re-read the book with a critical eye, I’d come away with a stronger sense of what Daley was trying to accomplish. As it stands, it’s the kind of book that doesn’t appeal to me and that I don’t really want to spend more time trying to figure out.

Despite this, I’m going to recommend you buy Welcome to the Divide… anyway, if only so you can come to your own conclusions. It’s clear that Daley put a lot of work into the book, and his style will definitely appeal to a particular subset of readers. Just because I’m not part of that subset doesn’t mean I’m going to criticize the novel for it. Welcome to the Divide... defies reviewing, so just check the book out for yourself.

Click here to buy Welcome to the Divide…

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Go Forth is the kind of book that makes me want to put my head through a wall.

I don’t mean that as an insult. Goldmund’s literary debut, a tale of debauchery and self-discovery, is an enthralling read. Go Forth is like being tossed into a roller coaster ass-first and clinging to the safety bar for dear life as you shoot through the loop-de-loops. Goldmund isn’t just a legit player, he’s a genuine literary talent, and reading this memoir makes me excited for whatever he puts out next.

But Jesus, this book is such a missed opportunity.

Go Forth is a fun book, but it displays the mistakes of a first-time author. While I enjoyed Goldmund’s tales of debauchery and sin south of the border, his poor pacing and other amateur errors suck the life out of his story. While this shouldn’t deter anyone from buying his book, don’t expect a masterpiece.

Go Forth, as I mentioned earlier, is a memoir focusing on a trip Goldmund took to Mexico earlier this year. There’s not much in the way of organized plot: he simply recites his adventures as they come, journeying from New Orleans down to May-he-co and back again. Along the way, he does drugs, bangs girls and lives life like he’s going to the electric chair in six months:

After sleeping for an hour, I woke up to the Indian rubbing my cock. I flipped her over, slipped in raw, and we fucked hard and loud for an hour. Her legs were so flexible that I could push her knee into her mouth—that opened up her pussy deep and wide. My entire cock sunk into this girl as we half asleep, half drunkenly banged into oblivion.

Goldmund writes like a modern-day Kerouac, with a dash of Jim Carroll and Bradley Smith. His prose slides off the page like sheets of jizz off a porn star’s face, throwing names, places and notches at you in light-speed. Unlike Kerouac, Goldmund understands the value of paragraph breaks, so you won’t be throwing your Kindle out the window in frustration at multi-page blocks of text.

Some people might have difficulty believing Goldmund’s stories, but having seen him in action myself, I know he’s the real deal. Watching the guy work a bar is like seeing a time-lapse video of maggots feasting on a dead cow. The last time I hung out with him, Kid Strangelove and I watched him zero in on the only cute, single girl in the bar on a dead Monday night… and take her home.

The problem with Goldmund’s writing is that it’s a mile wide and an inch deep.

Go Forth takes you all over the map, plowing through Goldmund’s conquests and escapades, but it doesn’t go into depth in any particular place. He glosses over just about everything in the book, giving you a taste of what he’s done, but no more. While this gives the book a fast pace and keeps it from getting dull—I finished it in about a couple hours—it strips the book of poignancy and emotional impact:

Her hot, dressed-up friend insisted on coming back with us and was visibly upset. She was clicking her heels hard on the pavement and when I tried to tease her a little, she ignored me. We walked to a big apartment complex that outlined a large courtyard. My girl took me into a room and we got naked quickly. She asked if I had a condom and I took one out of my back pocket, slipped it on, and we banged.

I don’t expect a detailed description of every instance that Goldmund has stuck his dick in some broad, but all too often during Go Forth, I was wishing he’d flesh out certain girls or stories a bit more. The effect is like being dragged through a museum at top speed by a tour guide who clearly just wants to kick you out in time for his lunch break. The book would have benefited from another fifty pages of detail.

Additionally, there’s one obnoxious digression near the end of Go Forth that brings the momentum to a halt. About four-fifths of the way in, Goldmund gives his thoughts on being banned from a certain forum (unnamed in the book, but you can figure out who he’s talking about). Not only does it clash with the show-don’t-tell motif of the book, Goldmund comes off as a little gossipy and femme.

I can understand why he’d want to write about it, but it would have been best left as a blog post.

Aside from these issues and the occasional wonky phrasing (more a product of lax editing than anything), Go Forth is a stimulating tale of excess and adventure. Take it for what it is—the first book by a talented-but-undisciplined writer—and you’ll enjoy it.

Click here to buy Go Forth: A Journey South.

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A direct sequel to The Saint Closes the Case, The Avenging Saint focuses on Simon Templar’s efforts to get revenge for the death of one of his lieutenants in that book. Unlike the sci-fi stylings of The Saint Closes the Case, The Avenging Saint feels more like a James Bond novel, with the Saint and company rushing to stop a new world war from igniting due to the machinations of arms dealer Rayt Marius:

“Now see here. Roger, you’ll come with me, and help me locate and start up the kite. Sonia, I want you to scrounge round and find a couple of helmets and a couple of pairs of goggles. Angel Face’s outfit is bound to be around the house somewhere, and he’s probably got some spares. After that, find me another nice long coil of rope—I’ll bet they’ve got plenty—and your job’s done. Lessing”—he looked across at the millionaire, who had risen to his feet at last—“it’s about time you did something for your life. You find some stray bits of string, without cutting into the beautiful piece that Sonia’s going to find for me, and amuse yourself splicing large and solid chairs onto Freeman, Hardy, and Willis over in the corner. Then they’ll be properly settled to wait here till I come back for them. Is that all clear?”

The Avenging Saint features just about everything you’d want from a Leslie Charteris novel: sharp dialogue, violent action and daring escapes. It’s not as poignant as The Saint Closes the Case, but it does its job well enough, further developing the characters and providing a fun story. It’s not thought-provoking literature, but that hardly makes it bad.

Put simply, if you enjoy thrillers and/or have read Charteris’ other novels, you’ll enjoy The Avenging Saint.

Click here to buy The Avenging Saint.

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Reading this book was like watching a man perform open heart surgery on himself.

The Sovereign Man is the writing debut of James Maverick, who’s been entertaining and informing men for years at his blog Maverick Traveler. While Maverick occupies the same get-laid-get-paid genre of travel writing as Roosh and Mark Zolo, his writing has always had a more mature edge to it, a calmness befitting his wider horizons. The Sovereign Man is a perfect crystallization of his beliefs and attitude, a must-read for men.

It’s not a self-help book per se: while the book is about Maverick’s philosophy of masculinity, it’s not a go-here-and-do-this kind of title. Rather, it’s a carefully constructed vivisection of Maverick’s own life, distilled into a series of principles laid out like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The Sovereign Man is an excellent summation of “big picture” masculinity and worth adding to your collection.

The book opens with an introduction detailing Maverick’s own masculine journey. After being flaked on by a Ukrainian girl he met on a train, he began deconstructing everything about his life in an attempt to understand himself:

But when there’s interest and desire, everything changes. I once met a nice girl during a trip to San Diego. After returning to New York, there was rarely a period of two days where she didn’t contact me and ask when I was coming back. Then there was a girl I met in Mexico, who was anxiously waiting for me at the airport when I returned for the second time six months later. These girls behaved very differently from the flaky Ukrainian girl. They were always available to hang out at a moment’s notice. All I had to do was ask. In fact, one day, while I was sitting in my New York apartment, I remember joking with the Mexican girl over Skype that we should get drunk in her favorite bar in Mexico City that night. She smiled and replied, “I’ll see you there.” That’s how easy it was. I didn’t have to beg, plead or cajole the California girl to see me. I didn’t have to ask the Mexican girl to meet me at the airport. Both of them wanted to see me, so they made it happen. They spoke with their actions instead of muttering flimsy promises and excuses. There were no games whatsoever. All I had to do was state a time and place and they would eagerly show up.

The Sovereign Man is divided into ten chapters, each focused on a principle or attitude that embodies Maverick’s concept of the “sovereign man.” The initial chapters focus on more obvious concepts such as value and time, but the later ones, such as “Kingdom,” are more esoteric and require you to have attained some mastery of the earlier sections. Maverick bolsters his arguments primarily with examples from his own life, both revolving around him and people he’s met:

Standards are also shaped by your environment, because it describes what you continuously interact with, day in and day out. Environment is your reference point. In America, thanks to the powerful reach of Hollywood and other mass media, a regular girl who happens to have blonde hair and a nice body is elevated to be highly important. These girls are artificially made to seem special and unique. But in countries where such women are as common as a blue sky, they’re nothing more than just normal. They aren’t in such huge demand. I’ve spent several years in various Northern and Eastern European countries, where the majority of women perfectly fit the “blonde bombshell” stereotype. I’ve ridden buses with them and passed them in the streets every single day. In fact, as I am writing this, a very cute blonde girl justpassed by on the street. Don’t get me wrong, such women are still very attractive; a beautiful woman is still a beautiful woman no matter where she is. But beautiful is all she is. She no longer has this mythical and spellbinding God-like status. When I spend every single day surrounded by seemingly beautiful women, the typical “blonde bombshell” label loses its luster. If you’re in a desert with no water in sight, water becomes scarce and dear. But if you’re in a freshwater lake, water is no longer scarce: it’s abundant. Similarly, if the only time you see an attractive woman is in a Hollywood movie and not regularly out on the streets, then beauty becomes truly scarce and highly sought after.

Maverick’s writing carefully skirts the edge between relatability and erudition. Think the wide-angle perspective of Robert Greene combined with the practicality of Jack Donovan in The Way of Men and you have The Sovereign Man in a nutshell. While the book is light on actionable advice, its broad-stroke philosophy will aid any man looking for enlightenment.

Reading The Sovereign Man is like attending a college lecture by an adjunct professor who isn’t afraid to crack jokes or call bullshit when he sees it.

The book is also worth reading because of Maverick’s willingness to examine his own life. As the bulk of The Sovereign Man’s examples are drawn from his personal experiences, he critically dissects his own screwups and mistakes, explaining where he went wrong when it came to implementing his own advice. Few writers are capable of the kind of self-examination that he pulls off.

The only area I can really fault the book is in Maverick’s prose. While his writing is clean, functional and understandable, Maverick is not a native English speaker and it shows. This isn’t an issue in his blog posts, but when you’re reading an entire book in his overly formal style, it can drag at points. It’s a shame too, considering the breadth of information he covers from start to finish.

Ultimately though, The Sovereign Man is an excellent distillation of masculine philosophy, worth reading on its own or as part of a self-improvement kick. If you’re looking for direction in life or you’re just interested in Maverick’s thoughts, this book is worth your money.

Click here to buy The Sovereign Man.

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