vel veeter – Page 187 – Cannonball Read 17

On one hand, this messiah gig is a b****.

The White Boy Shuffle by Paul Beatty

March 3, 2020 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

This is an early novel from the eventual Booker Prize winner Paul Beatty. Paul Beatty’s win for The Sellout a few years ago was certainly a surprise. The layers of irony and reversal happening in that novel and the ways in which the novel requires a certain experience with American life meant it felt like a very unlikely winner. This novel is probably even more unlikely. What’s funny about this book to me is that I have worked in two high schools that had this in the […]

The early November street was dark though night had ended, but the wind, to the grocer’s surprise, already clawed.

The Assistant by Bernard Malamud

March 2, 2020 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

This is an absolutely brilliant, beautiful, touching, and incisive novel by the writer of The Natural and the various story collections I’ve been reading recently. It’s based on a reworking of one of his previous stories in which we watch the terror and dread of a storekeeper as an empty store on his street is being reworked as a new deli. His own store, a former deli turned more into a grocery is middling, and this seems in part (and certainly this is his perception) because […]

At the turn of the twentieth-century, tobacco farmers were weak and angry.

The Cigarette by Sarah Milov

March 2, 2020 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

Here’s an interesting article about this book as it was first published: https://www.thelily.com/a-female-historian-wrote-a-book-two-male-historians-went-on-npr-to-talk-about-it-they-never-mentioned-her-name/ Anyway, this is a relatively dry (flue dried?) political of tobacco in the 20th century. It’s centered around the cigarette, but it’s not solely about that. Instead, it begins with the incorporation of tobacco growing into the concept of agriculture as a political concept. This means treating it as a commodity no different from any other agricultural commodity. This led to including tobacco production into agriculture subsidies, including it in farm […]

The Death of Duane Chapman

Head On by John Scalzi

February 28, 2020 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

This is the second novel in this series by John Scalzi. I read the first book and remembered the central conceit of the world building, but don’t recall the actual details of the plot. I do have some of that restored to me from reading this one, but given that these books are otherwise structured as procedural mysteries within the world of the world-building, the actual plot is not super important. If Scalzi were to continue writing them, and I don’t know why he wouldn’t […]

The dam’d blood burst, first through his nostrils, then pounded through the veins in his neck…

Just Above My Head by James Baldwin

February 28, 2020 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

It’s interesting to me because no matter how incisive, and even painful, and even stark and sharp James Baldwin’s nonfiction is, nonfiction in which I find myself partly the subject as a white man in the US, I tend to find it so clear and so precise that it’s almost light to read. (Stylistically and execution, not subject and tone). But his fiction feels almost miasmic a lot of the time and he grapples to represent the phenomenon of existence in prose. This is not […]

You’re on the porch with the broom sweeping the same spot, getting the same sound–dry straw against dry leaf caught in the loose-dirt crevice of cement tiles.

Those Bones are Not My Child by Toni Cade Bambara

February 28, 2020 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

There’s a little live-blogging happening in this review as I work my way through the book. The book is very very good, oddly not nearly as depressingly sad as I thought it would be (though very depressingly sad), and much more complex, nuanced, intelligent and erudite than what I thought the book was going to be based on the description. Not to say that I didn’t think Toni Cade Bambara was capable of such a book, but I just didn’t realize that’s the book I […]

Chet Arthur on Calder Willingham (1)All of you phonies just wish you were Buddy.
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...

About vel veeter

On one hand, this messiah gig is a b****.

The early November street was dark though night had ended, but the wind, to the grocer’s surprise, already clawed.

At the turn of the twentieth-century, tobacco farmers were weak and angry.

The Death of Duane Chapman

The dam’d blood burst, first through his nostrils, then pounded through the veins in his neck…

You’re on the porch with the broom sweeping the same spot, getting the same sound–dry straw against dry leaf caught in the loose-dirt crevice of cement tiles.

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