vel veeter – Page 183 – Cannonball Read 17

Patsy sat by herself at the beginning of the evening, eating a Hershey bar.

Moving On by Larry McMurtry

March 18, 2020 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

This book is a lot of book. It’s a very plot heavy book that takes place starting around 1960, primarily in and around Houston, but also takes forays into Los Angeles, Wyoming, and other places around the country. We are mostly into the young marriage of Jim and Patsy Carpenter, starting the summer before Jim is meant to start his English PhD at Rice University. Patsy is mostly along for the ride as Jim wants to further explore his interest in the rodeo photography as […]

There’s a lovely saying: abroad, even the stars are tinny.

Think, Write, Speak: Uncollected Nonfiction by Vladimir Nabokov

March 18, 2020 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

This is an odds and ends collection of Nabokov uncollected nonfiction published recently. It spans about 50 years or so of the writer’s life and is a bit hit or miss, but when it hits, it’s very good. You have to like Nabokov both as a writer and as a crank I think to really enjoy, and I will provide some highlights. It begins with early reviews and literary assessments. It’s important to remember that while he was absolutely brilliant and well-read, he’s not trained […]

A battleship… Uh oh, sharks.

Gyo by Junji Ito

Uzumaki by Junji Ito

The Test by Sylvain Neuvel

The Hero by Lee Child

Classic Krakauer by Jon Krakauer

Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore

Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey

March 17, 2020 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

Like a lot of you, I filled up on library books for the closures and hunkering down. My library announced that not only are they closing, that fines are waived, and nothing is due until the end of March, that also their dropboxes are closed. Who knows what that means, but for me it likely means I will read all the books I got, instead of sorting through and figuring it out one by one. Anyway, here’s my first chunk of reviews from all of […]

The naked man who lay splayed out on his face beside the swimming pool might have been dead.

From Russia with Love by Ian Fleming

March 17, 2020 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

I’ve read two other James Bond books — Casino Royale and a story collection with The Living Daylights and Octopussy. This is the second novel I read, and I liked it a lot more than the first one. I think the biggest difference is that I am reminded that James Bond is usually the least interesting part of any James Bond movie or story and the fact that this book doesn’t bring him in until about halfway through makes it much more interesting of a novel. The story involves […]

Where it faced the highway, the Sunburst was just another motel, but behind the main building sat a cluster of a half-dozen concrete cottages with with tiny rock garden.

The Color of Money by Walter Tevis

March 16, 2020 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

The last of the crop of Walter Tevis books I have direct access to in audiobook form. This is a sequel to the first novel The Hustler and the book that the sequel to that film is based on. I don’t recall a lot of the Martin Scorsese movie and maybe it’s good, but the changes that he made as filmmaker are so incredibly boring compared to how very very good this book is. It far surpasses the first book, really gets at the heart of […]

While we waited we were visited by the ghosts of the girls who had already died.

The Trojan War Museum and Other Stories by Aysa Papatya Bucak

March 16, 2020 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

This is a very good short story collection that came out last year. The quality comes in a lot of ways, namely that like other goof story collections there’s both a stylistic and thematically (and especially tonal) consistency among the stories here. The opening story is told in a kind of afterlife collection voice of girls who have died as a consequence of patriarchy — in a kind of displaced ahistorical way — and this narrative distance continues through almost all of the stories. We […]

Loreen on “I made promises to you that I’m not sure I can keep.”Just so you know, there are now 18 books banned in Utah. Here’s the list compiled by the Salt Lake...
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...

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