Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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vel veeter's Reviews:

They crested out on the bluff in the late afternoon sun with their shadows long on the sawgrass and burnt sedge…

Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy

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This book asks the question: what if we took Lena Grove plot from William Faulkner’s Light in August and made it more grim, grisly, and depressing? This book begins with a girl of 16 giving birth to a child in the Tennessee backwoods. It’s her brother’s child, and after the birth he takes it out to the woods and abandons it. He tells her it died and he buried it, but when she presses him, he tells her he left it. It becomes clear that […]

Morris is suffering from that affliction known as teetolalism.

Mr. Loverman by Bernadine Evaristo

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This is a novel by the Booker Prize winning writer from this previous, whose winning book I have not read just yet, but am about to, but whose earlier book Girl With Blonde Roots I read last year and thought was very good. This book is also very good. We have two narrators, though it’s not an even split between. The book is about a 74 Antiguan-English man who is facing down old age, a very unhappy marriage, unhappily impending sobriety, and most importantly the prospect […]

Greta showed Ed the letter as soon as he came in the door.

A Dog's Ransom by Patricia Highsmith

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This is another Patricia Highsmith thriller, this time from 1972, and you can feel the 1972 dripping through this one, even though the writing and tone feels a little older. We begin with a married couple in their forties receiving a poison pen letter asking for a ransom for their missing miniature poodle. The letter-writer is asking for $1000. We also find out in this section of the novel that the husband has recently been grieving for his 18 year old daughter from his first […]

The coach from Ellsworth to Butcher’s Crossing was a Dorothy that had been converted to carry passengers and small freight.

Butcher's Crossing by John Williams

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This is a reread of a novel I picked up a few years ago when everyone (including me) was rediscovering John Williams. Initially, while I liked this a lot, I didn’t like it as much as I liked his other novel Stoner. Rereading it has made the novel grow in my estimation and esteem. This truly is a great novel. We meet Andrews, fresh out of Harvard College, coming to Colorado for unclear personal reasons. He shows up in the town Butcher’s Crossing, introduces himself to […]

The man in dark-blue slacks and forest-green sportshirt waited impatiently in the line.

The Blunderer by Patricia Highsmith

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A truly terrifying crime novel! In this novel, Walter hates his wife and wishes she were dead, kind of. He finds newspaper clippings about missing or dead women, he even visits the employment of a man who is suspected of killing his wife. And when his wife threatens to kill herself, he leaves the house and goes to the movie, only to find her later having taken pills and needing to be in the hospital. But he doesn’t kill his wife. So when she ends […]

Victor readjusted the shovels on his shoulder and stepped gingerly over an old, half-sunken grave.

Vicious by VE Schwab

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This is the first book of the Villains series by VE Schwab. I haven’t read the second one yet, and I have only read one of the Magic series, but I liked it. This book I also liked, but I am not entirely sold on it in ways that I thought the opening book of the Magic series was incredibly rich and detailed. So the premise here is basically a few medical students figure out that maybe superheroes/supervillains are real or could be real, and […]



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