Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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vel veeter's Reviews:

Crossroads of Freedom – James M McPherson (2002)

Crossroads of Freedom by James M McPherson

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A fascinating and competent rundown of the basic history and politics centering on the Battle of Antietam from James M McPherson. I can’t really tell you much about the thesis of this book and the purpose or audience either, other than to say that the book wants to center Antietam for us in ways that many books spend time looking well past it. For one, most people focus on 1863 and 1864 as the real “meat” of the war, focusing so heavily on Grant’s western […]

The Second Life of Samuel Tyne – Esi Edugyan (2004)

The Second Life of Samuel Tyne by Esi Edugyan

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Sometimes a debut novel definitively feels like a debut novel, and this one does. Samuel Tyne is a man approaching middle age when he finds out this his uncle (a more or less wealthy man living in a small town) has died and left him his farm. Samuel unilaterally decides to quit his job (his wife would have wanted to know this) and move his family to that small town. Samuel was born in Gold Coast (Ghana) and is now living in western Canada and […]

These Dreams of You – Steve Erickson (2012)

These Dreams of You by Steve Erickson

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There are some ways in which I found this book a lot more interesting than I thought it was going to be about 10 pages in. There’s a funny moment where our protagonist is holding his hands, on the verge of tears, and about questioning himself as he watches Barack Obama being sworn in 2008. This among the expression of wonder at being the white adopted father of a small Black girl from Ethiopia. Uh oh, I thought to myself. But once we get rolling, […]

All Clear – Connie Willis (2010)

All Clear by Connie Willis

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The sequel to Black Out, which I contend should have been trimmed by 40% of each book and turned into a single volume. Was works for different reasons in Firewatch feels bloated here, and what worked well in Doomsday Book and was boring in To Say Nothing of the Dog, fails here too. I kept waiting for this book to end, and my god the book seemed like it was dying to end. But it didn’t end. Until it finally did. The issue with this […]

No Name in the Street – James Baldwin (1971)

No Name in the Street by James Baldwin

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In reading the two previous essay collections by Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name and Notes of a Native Son, you can feel where Baldwin’s thinking shifts throughout at times from an inner understanding of his own place in society toward a more clear understanding of his role as a writer. After those two books, you get The Fire Next Time, which clearly reads like a full reckoning. This essay collection feels like the fully articulated thoughts of someone so much more secure in his understanding, […]

The Graduate – Charles Webb (1966) et al

The Graduate by Charles Webb

South of Heaven by Jim Thompson

Nothing More than Murder by Jim Thompson

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The Graduate – 4/5 Stars Benjamin Braddock is home from college, en route to grad school in the fall, and experiencing an excruciating cocktail celebration at his parents home. He just can’t seem to tell them that he doesn’t want any of the things he worked for, has no plan for what to do or what this means, and also doesn’t know that he’s about to throw himself into a nice little destructive spiral. He see Mrs Robinson at the party, still pretty attractive for […]



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