Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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vel veeter's Reviews:

The Abyss – Marguerite Yourcenar (1966)

The Abyss by Marguerite Yourcenar

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I am firstly stuck looking at both the English and French titles of this book. In English, The Abyss, and in French L’Oeuvre au Noir, which translates more directly as the “Black Work,” which is a cool title. So maybe it’s the more contemporary use of the concept of the abyss ala Nietzsche that throws me. When you look up the phrase “the black work” in French, you come across articles discussing the steps of alchemy (the steps the soul takes when taking on alchemy) […]

In the Land of the Cyclops – Karl Ove Knausgard (2021)

In the Land of the Cyclops by Karl Ove Knausgard

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This is about the third or so nonfiction book by Karl Ove Knausgard I’ve read and I think it’s the weakest. The other two, not counting the seasons quartet, which to read more and more like his My Struggle books (once the initial premise is established and especially the third in the seasons) are more unified in their version and not entirely analytical, are his book on writing and his book on Edvard Munch, both short, and both tightly focused. Here he meanders, and we’re […]

My Soul to Keep – Tananarive Due (1997)

My Soul to Keep by Tananarive Due

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This is one of those books that’s sort of always been around in my reading consciousness. It came out when I was in high school, and being a big Stephen King fan, and being new to figuring out what books to read on my own, it came across my radar and has stuck with me sense. I’m finally reading it, after reading a different Due book a year or so ago, and it’s actually a lot different than I thought. I had it in my […]

The Gnostic Gospels – Elaine Pagels (1979)

The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels

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Did everyone go to high school with exactly one dude who read this book in high school and then came to school brandishing his new power of (understanding that that Bible does not represent a total unified understanding of Christianity, but a complicated and somewhat cobbled together book of myths and stories) like a cudgel? I think there’s two versions of these guys: atheist guy and conspiracy theory Christian guy. This second guy might also be a total overlap with “I read the Celestine Prophecy” […]

Enter the Aardvark – Jessica Anthony (2020)

Enter the Aardvark by Jessica Anthony

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So I won’t say who this book is about. I mean technically it’s not about anyone, because fiction (a framework, I actually respect), but anyway. If you read this one, you KNOW who it’s about. This book is told in two distinct threads. In one, we follow a third person narration of the finding of an aardvark in the wild, which is captured, killed and mounted, and shipped back to England to a naturalist. It’s the mid-1800s. So these things are less frowned upon. In […]

A Children’s Bible – Lydia Millet (2020)

A Children's Bible by Lydia Millet

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Part Oryx and Crake (bending to The Road) part A High Wind in Jamaica. This is a book about a group of children ostensibly having a summer away in mansions by the coast (upper middle class it turns out), having summer fun and summer camp (well, camp counselor) with drugs and alcohol and sex games. There’s one much younger boy, who is protected from all this, who tags along with everyone. We slowly realize that the absence of the parents and the strange way the […]



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