Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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vel veeter's Reviews:

The Ripliad….no wait, the Lord of the Rips…..The Rippit.

Ripley's Game by Patricia Highsmith

The Boy Who Followed Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

Ripley Under Water by Patricia Highsmith

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Ripley’s Game – 3/5 This is a reread of this one (I am rereading the whole series) and I liked it better the second time through. Two things happen early on in the book that are very important. First, Tom Ripley is asked to considered doing a murder for hire against two mafia enforcers, and next, Tom is annoyed at a party guest who kind of shows him up one evening. Tom does not want to do the murder, finding murder distasteful, even when necessary. […]

More Mann Stories

A Man and his Dog by Thomas Mann

Felix Krull by Thomas Mann

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A Man and His Dog – 3/5 I am not sure here what the actual story is. But it’s also like 70 pages, which seems pretty long for a novella, I am not sure what the actual story is, right? Specifically, we are dealing with a long description of a man getting a Pointer, which is vague, given that there are several varieties of pointers to choose from. We learn about the pointer from it’s breed specifications, from it’s character, it’s demeanor, and from the […]

Skeleton Crew

The Mist by Stephen King

Skeleton Crew by Stephen King

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The Mist – 4/5 I’ve read and reread The Mist a number of times, mostly separate from the rest of the stories in this collection. I often found that once I was done with it, given that it’s over 100 pages, I was kind of spent. I also found, that especially with horror stories and sci-fi stories etc, that audiobook versions are so so so much better for me. The Mist also works a lot differently because it’s built more like a Stephen King novel […]

CK-UP

The Fuck-Up by Arthur Nersesian

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If you saw this book in 1997 when it was first published and began appearing in bookstores, especially the likes of Books-a-Million or Barnes or Noble, you might recognize the cover. It was deeply scandalizing and deeply alluring. In reality the book is not really either, and this ends up being a pretty good book of a kind, with a bad title. The title promises what the book can’t really deliver, and while the book is funny and weird and sad, it’s not so much […]

Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin

Book of Ages by Jill Lepore

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This history takes up the question asked in Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own regarding a hypothetical Shakespeare sister who instead of being a wife and mother (her likely fate) is offered an opportunity to explore her career endeavors or whatever career she might want for herself. Instead of Shakespeare, she posits this question for Benjamin Franklin, who did in fact have a sister, Jane, some 8 years younger than him and who did write one small book, the “Book of Ages” of the […]

Death on the Installment Plan

Death on the Installment Plan by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

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If you have read Journey to the End of the Night, you already know how that deeply unpleasant that novel is. If you haven’t already read this one, you don’t know yet how much more deeply unpleasant this novel is. But also it’s good? Well, that’s not easy to say exactly. The two novels together helped to break open that other part of life that novels often avoided for obvious reasons. These novels dwell in (though not exclusively) the sexual life of people, as well […]



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