vel veeter – Page 107 – Cannonball Read 17

Mother Night – Kurt Vonnegut (1961)

Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut

June 23, 2021 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

Still just an absolutely fantastic novel. I think I even saw the movie before the first time I read this, and if I am on the project of rereading a lot of Vonnegut, and I think I am, this book shines through. Just a wonderful exercise in how important irony is for literature, and how often irony has nothing to do with humor. Howard Campbell Jr was a vociferous, vicious, and vile Nazi propagandist. His nightly broadcasts, written and performed in English, were sent out […]

Tossing in a bunch at once.

The Ice Shirt by William Vollmann

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

The Rip Off by Jim Thompson

On Juneteenth by Annette Gordon-Reed

Why are We in Vietnam? by Norman Mailer

A Winter Haunting by Dan Simmons

June 23, 2021 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

The Ice Shirt – 3/5 Stars I might be Viking-ed out. Between this novel, playing Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (which is a ton of game), and rewatching the Marvel movies (and with Loki starting up right now) this book was poorly chosen for me to read right now. But it’s a book I’ve been planning to read for 20 years and have failed to a few times, so maybe this is just my reaction to the book. The book is a kind of mixed media novel […]

Notes on a Cowardly Lion – John Lahr (1968)

Notes on a Cowardly Lion by John Lahr

June 15, 2021 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

A longish, dense biography of Bert Lahr, collected through interviews and personal reminiscences by John Lahr, Bert Lahr’s son. The biography doesn’t seem that long, but it’s 350 pages, and it’s pretty packed in a dense way with details of Bert Lahr’s childhood and long career in burlesque, vaudeville, Broadway, and cinema. The information sometimes is a little dry, and occasionally impersonal at times. The full knowledge that John Lahr is Bert Lahr’s son comes up very rarely in the first 2/3s of the book […]

How the South Won the Civil War – Heather Cox Richardson (2020)

How the South Won the Civil War by Heather Cox Richardson

June 14, 2021 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

This book is poorly titled I think. The book does answer that assertion posed in the title, but it’s not quite what it seems when you read the book. The book spends huge amounts of time in defining and describing the political history of the South in the founding, in the early years of the country as so on. In fact, this is almost the most of the book. It maybe spends 10% or so addressing the assertion in the title. More than answering that, […]

The Armies of the Night – Norman Mailer (1968)

The Armies of the Night by Norman Mailer

June 14, 2021 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

If you hated this novel, I would get it. I think even Norman Mailer would get it. But I really enjoyed it and really expected something very different, and given that I decided to pick this novel up after reading some journalism pieces of Mailer’s from about the same time period I should have not expected this novel to be any different from what it is. So, the subtitle tells you it’s not really a novel — history as a novel, the Novel as history. […]

Blood Colony – Tananarive Due (2008)

Blood Colony by Tananarive Due

June 14, 2021 by vel veeter 1 Comment

As with the third book of almost any series, it’s hard to write about this one without getting into the plot. One thing that happened almost immediately in the transition between the first and second book, and now the second and third book is that the world has been allowed to move forward without us. This is something that takes patience as a writer, and as a reader. We’re given plenty of information to catch us back up, but we’re also treated with respect. So […]

Zirza on A Gothic Classic for a ReasonIt's one of those wish-you-could-read-it-again-for-the-first-time books. I loved it.
Emmalita on “It came to something when you found yourself hoping that the footsteps you heard were ghosts.”I loved the ending! I don’t think it’s been out long enough to talk about why though.
Dixie on Track Her Down by Melinda LeighI am just starting Track Her Down and I have read them all in order till now and thought I...
Roland of Gilead on How can you give us the gift of a crazy character named Rando Thoughtful and then just as suddenly take that gift away? We need to talk, Uncle Stevie.I came across this randomly years after it was written because I was searching "Random Thoughtful. But I have the...
Emmalita on “Only you, Em, would refer to heartbreak as a distraction. I think I would have a more sympathetic response if I asked to marry a bookcase.”Oh my goodness, Gallifrey was beautiful. I’m sure her mittens were gloriously murdery.

About vel veeter