Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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vel veeter's Reviews:

The old man came out to the garden.

The Plotters by Kim Un-Su

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This is a 2010 novel from the Korean novelist Un-Su Kim about a group of assassins working in the shadows. This is a very wheels within wheels kind of book, and it’s not really a spy or assassins book so much as a portrayal of modern forms of violence, power, and money. We follow Reseng, one assassin within the, let’s call it, economy of assassination. What becomes clear is that somewhere in the last 60 or 70s years, assassination has become a neoliberally dictated and […]

As I write these lines it’s early spring in the Northeast, and Americans of every age and station are getting back into their cold, muddy, salt-befouled automobiles.

Hotels of North America by Rick Moody

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This is the most recent novel by Rick Moody, and of the three I’ve read in the last couple of weeks, it’s the one I liked the most. It’s the only one of the three that supports the playfulness of the language in the story and structure of the novel, and it’s the only one for which the voice employed feels remotely “realized”. There’s not much real plot here, but instead what we’re reading is a series of long reviews of hotels across North America […]

Henry, black and stooped, unlocked the door with a key on a large metal ring.

The Hustler by Walter Tevis

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This is the novel that the Paul Newman/George C Scott/Jackie Gleason movie from 1961, and the same author of the sequel, The Color of Money starring Paul Newman and Tom Cruise. I picked this up in part because it was available from my library as an audiobook, but also because two other Walter Tevis novels, which I also plan to read soon, Mockingbird and The Queen’s Gambit, the second of which my wife got from the library completely out of the blue, and the first being on […]

Here is this baby, crying in my, and don’t he just know when to stop?

Martin and John by Dale Peck

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I wanted to read some Dale Peck novels because when I picked up a Rick Moody book at the library the other week and looked into its press, I found out that Dale Peck wrote a scathing review of Rick Moody’s work circa 2003 that was infamous for its opening line “Rick Moody is the worst writer of his generation.” and I love a good takedown. I also wondered then, if this is Dale Peck’s position on Rick Moody, how does his own work stand […]

On the way to the hospital in Paducah, Spence notices the row of signs along the highway: WHERE WILL YOU BE IN ETERNITY?

Spence and Lila by Bobbie Ann Mason

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This is a small novel by Bobbie Ann Mason, for me most famous for her short story collection Shiloh. That book contains a tremendously good title story, and several other very good stories. Among those stories are a handful about a woman named Nancy Culpepper who is a kind of stand-in figure for Mason in many of her stories. Like plenty of authors before her she uses this figure to explore different elements of her own life and allows the intimacy and continuity of the character […]

Paint me a small railroad station then, ten minutes before dark.

Bullet Park by John Cheever

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It’s interesting given how both omnipresent, but relatively non-famous a lot of John Cheever novels are. His two big novels, The Wapshot Chronicle and The Wapshot Scandal are well-known and one won the Pulitzer, but I have never heard of anyone reading them. In school, I only ever read his short stories. I’ve read three of his novels now, and this is the best of the bunch so far. It’s interesting how many writers definitely, without a doubt, ripped off Cheever, and especially this novel. We are in […]



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