Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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vel veeter's Reviews:

Brian Engle rolled the American Pride L1011 to a stop at Gate 22 and flicked off the FASTEN SEATBELT light at exactly 10:14 PM.

The Langoliers by Stephen King

Secret Window, Secret Garden by Stephen King

The Library Policeman by Stephen King

Four Past Midnight: The Sun Dog by Stephen King

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This is one of those Stephen King books that came out when I was a kid and fully cognizant of him as a writer. I would have to really dig deep into what books of his I might have read by 1990 (possibly none) and this was definitely one of the books my older brother got out of the library and read. I didn’t read it back then, though I have seen the godawful tv movie of “The Langoliers” with Bronson Pinchot and Dean Stockwell […]

The new curate seemed a nice young man, but what a pity it was that his combinations showed, tucked carelessly into socks, when he sat down.

Some Tame Gazelle by Barbara Pym

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This is the first Barbara Pym novel from 1950. And it feels like both a first novel and a first Barbara Pym novel. At some point in English literature (and this is true about American literature as well in its own particular ways), there’s a shift in books, especially pastoral town books (Jane Austen, Arnold Bennett, George Eliot, some Waugh etc, Miss Marple) from books where going to church (especially regular old Church of England church) goes from a part of and sometimes topic within […]

As she woke up in the pod, she remembered three things.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

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As with everyone else in the world (of this site) I read the first Becky Chambers book. The book begins with Rosemary, a newly minted clerk joining the crew of the Wayfarer, a worm tunneling contract ship with a diverse crew of varying species. We are seated in Rosemary’s position (although the book jumps around to the different characters, our introduction to everything  is through her initial tour and meet and greet). As we learn about the world the novel inhabits, the species and characters […]

I reiterate Beowulf, I recite my Yoruba tongue-twister, I tell Lucian Freud’s joke: we are creatures of private convention.

Known and Strange Things by Teju Cole

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This is a curated collection of essays by Teju Cole, also known for his fiction The Open City and Every Day is for the Thief. I say “curated” because Teju Cole talks in the introduction about looking for works to select from that he thinks are representative and connected, if not complete. So the essays range in topics, beginning with readings of James Baldwin from Teju Cole’s Nigerian-American background (separate and distinct from James Baldwin’s African-American background) as well as with Cole’s connection and work with Switzerland. […]

His name was Gaal Domick and he was just a country boy who had never seen Trantor before.

Foundation by Isaac Asimov

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This is a series of short stories starting off a novels series that comprises seven novels by Isaac Asimov and then three additional novels by David Brin. The stories take place in a “long empire” that has lasted some 10,000 plaus years but seems to be dying now. The first story, which was written last, discusses the ways in which the empire itself has sought to silence any analytic mention of the entropy of the empire itself and we watch as an academic who has […]

It was 2 p.m. on the afternoon of May 7, 1915.

The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie

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I had avoided this book for awhile because the first two times I tried reading it I couldn’t get past the first chapter. I stuck with it this time, and I ended really liking it. The reason the first chapter was, and still is a hang up is that Tommy and Tuppence, two best friends reuniting after the war who decide to start an adventure for hire (sort of underworld factota), speak initially in what I think is Agatha Christie playfully mocking post-war slang. It’s […]



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