vel veeter – Page 124 – Cannonball Read 17

Milk Fed – Melissa Broder (2021)

Milk Fed by Melissa Broder

March 9, 2021 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

I really do like Melissa Broder’s writing, and this is the fourth book of hers I’ve read, and after loving The Pisces, I found this one disappointing. It’s hard to separate all my thoughts while reading the book from additional thoughts and ideas from my conversations with my wife, who also has read both novels, and from a few reviews and interviews with the book. I called this book “one of the most spooked books I’ve read” and I meant by this that it feels […]

The Hills is Lonely – Lillian Beckwith (1959)

The Hills is Lonely by Lillian Beckwith

March 4, 2021 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

This a memoir and travel narrative from the mid-20th century. Lillian Beckwith puts an ad in the papers looking for a place to live for some amount of time for a “rest cure”. She receives many different responses, but the earnestness and the laughs and charm exuding from one particular response causes her to choose to move to one of the Hebridean islands on the west coast of Scotland. This is the 1950s and so this kind of life is at the very least more […]

The Bingo Palace – Louise Erdrich (1994)

The Bingo Palace by Louise Erdrich

March 3, 2021 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

This is novel from Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine collection of books. Generally that means a few things. Those books will be a little haunted by the two figures Nanapush and Fleur Pillager, as this book is, but it doesn’t always mean that a book will be part of a “series” in terms of a continuing chronology. Here we find ourselves in the contemporary of the 1990s and Lipsha Morrissey, a wayward and somewhat prodigal grandson, is called back home by his grandmother. While there, he […]

Arguably – Christopher Hitchens (2011)

Arguably by Christopher Hitchens

March 3, 2021 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

I made my initial rendering of this book 5 stars based on about 3/4 of the way through it. At that point, I’d read about 600 pages of Hitchens mostly reviewing books, discussing history, talking about contemporary writers and thinkers, and addressing a few off-kilter and slightly ill-advised topics like “Why Women Aren’t Funny”. That last essay, I found last strident and offensive than I originally remember it, because his title is more provocative than the essay ends up being. The book reviews here are […]

Writing Politics – David Bromwich ed. (2020)

Writing Politics by David Bromwich ed.

March 2, 2021 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

Rating this book is strange because in part, nearly all the essays are public domain (especially in the US and UK) and there aren’t even translation copyright issues because they were written in English. It’s also hard to figure out how to rate their content because many of them are seminal political texts. Instead, it has to fall to the whole of the book, the impetus behind the book, and the editing of the book. I have to admit to error I made in buying […]

Dying of Whiteness – Jonathan Metzl (2019)

Dying of Whiteness by Jonathan Metzl

March 2, 2021 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

This is a kind of pop social science book (or more so a pop public health book) written by a medical researcher and doctor breaking down data, conducting interviews, and and analyzing political and health trends in a few areas of the US. The wider focus of the book is the ways in which entrenched whiteness creates not only health crises for non-white people, but also especially for white people, especially for those who, as we often say, “vote against their own interests,” or how […]

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.

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