vel veeter – Page 34 – Cannonball Read 17

End of year 2

The Chamber by John Grisham

The Beetle Leg by John Hawkes

The Theater and its Double by Antonin Artaud

Books Do Furnish a Room by Anthony Powell

Temporary Kings by Anthony Powell

Hearing Secret Harmonies by Anthony Powell

December 25, 2022 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

Dance to the Music of Time Vol 4 – 4/5 Books Do Furnish a Room This is the 10th (10th!!) book in the series and after the foray in the war, we’re right back where we started: discussing marriages and books in the UK. Specifically, we’re looking into the post-war publishing industry and discussing the state of literature now in 1945 or so. So where are? Well the Moderns (sic) have hung it up and we’ve moved into some other kind of thing that can’t […]

The Man Without Qualities

The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil

December 22, 2022 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

“Was he a strong person? He didn’t know.” This novel is ostensibly 1750 pages long, at least if you go by the basic page count. But don’t worry! It’s actually only 1200 pages, plus another 500 pages of partial and abandoned material, so it’s not that bad! The novel is great, but exhausting as you can imagine. The biggest exhausting element about it is that it’s not remotely cohesive or consistent. There’s numerous narrative threads and there’s sections of cohesion, but for the most part […]

End of Year 1

The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck

Hamlet's Enemey by Theodore Lidz

Killing Floor by Lee Child

The Client by John Grisham

God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens

The Uplift War by David Brin

Monkey by Wu Cheng'en

Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard

December 22, 2022 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

The Winter of Our Discontent – 4/5 This is John Steinbeck’s last novel and it begins with our narrator, Ethan Allen Hawley, trying to reckon with what it’s like to have once had money and then not to. He’s a veteran who came home to find his father had squandered the family fortune to make a risky investment (war profiteering) that didn’t pan out. So now a while on, married with two kids, Ethan works out a grocery store for an Italian ex-pat. He’s offered […]

The Gold Bug Variations

The Gold Bug Variations by Richard Powers

December 13, 2022 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

My first interaction with this book came from another Richard Powers book, Galatea 2.2, in which the narrator, Richard Powers spends his time lamenting having to give up this book to publication and how much he wants to go back and live with them. That book has some similar focus to this one. In a lot of ways this book is a novel version of Escher, Godel, Bach, which looks at complex systems, number sequences, spirals, patterns, and chaos. This book does the same thing. The […]

A Stillness at Appomattox

A Stillness at Appomattox by Bruce Catton

December 12, 2022 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

I learned about this book from reading the Collected Letters of Ralph Ellison in which he reads and reviews this book and finds it to be excellent. It is excellent. It’s easily one of the best histories of the Civil War I’ve ever read in part because of the narrow focus, but also because of the narrative drive. This is among the most interesting parts of the war for me, and I think in part it’s because it’s so little talked about in the minutiae […]

Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life

Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin

December 12, 2022 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

I think this book has an unfortunate subtitle which kind of mars how good the book is and how remarkable Shirley Jackson was as a woman and a writer. The title comes from a review that more or less referred to her in this way. That question, how could the writer responsible for the funny family-memoirs Raising Demons and Life Among the Savages also write The Haunting of Hill House, “The Lottery”, and others? The answer of course is complex and simple at the same […]

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...
Emmalita on “Only you, Em, would refer to heartbreak as a distraction. I think I would have a more sympathetic response if I asked to marry a bookcase.”Oh my goodness, Gallifrey was beautiful. I’m sure her mittens were gloriously murdery.

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