Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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vel veeter's Reviews:

Timothy Snyder; Nora Krug

On Tyranny: Graphic Edition by Timothy Snyder; Nora Krug

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“History does not repeat, but it does instruct.” I first the text of the book around the time it came out, and it’s an appealing and terrifying book. If you read a lot of Timothy Snyder, you begin to understand that he’s a kind of old school European-style liberal, and the fact that he’s worked with Tony Judt on several projects before Judt died makes perfect sense. Tony Judt has a basic idea that if you want a public policy to really work, you have […]

Tom Wolfe

The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby by Tom Wolfe

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“I don’t mean for this to sound like ‘I had a vision’ or anything, but there was a specific starting point for practically all of these stories.” There’s a saying that goes with the Velvet Underground, that when they first came out only about 1000 people bought their albums but that every one of that 1000 started a band. When you read this first Tom Wolfe collection, which I am certain has what some people consider some of his classic or most famous pieces, you […]

Boethius

The Consolation of Philosophy by Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

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“Who wrought my studious numbers Smoothly once in happier days, Now perforce in tears and sadness Learn a mournful strain to raise. Lo, the Muses, grief-dishevelled, Guide my pen and voice my woe; Down their cheeks unfeigned the tear drops To my sad complainings flow! These alone in danger’s hour Faithful found, have dared attend On the footsteps of the exile To his lonely journey’s end.”   This book is a dialog, a poem, a religious and philosophical treatise, and kind of a fantasy novel […]

George Orwell

Burmese Days by George Orwell

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“U Po Kyin, Subdivisional Magistrate of Kyauktada, in Upper Burma, was sitting in his veranda.” George Orwell like Aldous Huxley is a victim of his own success. He’s most widely known for his novels 1984 and Animal Farm, but like Huxley he also wrote several other novels and a lot of nonfiction. I would say that Down and Out in London and Paris is a truly weird and wonderful book, and Homage to Catalonia is incredibly important. Burmese Days is not either really, but it […]

Patrick White

The Vivisector by Patrick White

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“It was Sunday, and Mumma had gone next door with Lena and the little ones.” This long novel comes from Patrick White, Australia’s sole Nobel Prize winner, and it was more or less the last book he wrote before winning the award, which probably means it played a role in the win. The book is a portrayal of the life of Hurtle Duffield, who becomes a famous artist over the course of the novel, and while it sometimes is about his art and his way […]

William James

Varieties of Religious Experience by William James

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“It is with no small amount of trepidation that I take my place behind this desk, and face this learned audience. To us Americans, the experience of receiving instruction from the living voice, as well as from the books, of European scholars, is very familiar. At my own University of Harvard, not a winter passes without its harvest, large or small, of lectures from Scottish, English, French, or German representatives of the science or literature of their respective countries whom we have either induced to […]



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