Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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vel veeter's Reviews:

The City and the Pillar

The City and the Pillar by Gore Vidal

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This is Gore Vidal’s third novel, first published in 1948. His first novel Williwaw was a solid success and is one of the very first WWII novels, even though the novel primarily takes place far away from the war. His second novel, In a Yellow Wood, was considerably less successful, perhaps as Vidal intimates in his introduction to this novel, for it not really reflecting what he wanted to write about. He also mentions that his grandfather, a former Senator, was perhaps grooming him to […]

The 1619 Project

The 1619 Project by Editor: Nikole Hannah-Jones

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Jones’s opening essay from the original project is still part of this book, but the book begins instead with a new introduction to the collected book version. I was really excited to hear this new introduction because it addressed something I thought was missing from a lot of the discourse around the project. I am not a historian and would never claim to be one, and the only way I know how to think through historical writing is through comparison among different texts. In addition, […]

Giving Good Weight

Giving Good Weight by John McPhee

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This is a collection of creative non-fiction essays by John McPhee, who seems like he has been something of an institution for a long time, even though it feels like he’s in some kind of retirement now. But with writers, they might always write something new. This collection has five pieces, with the title piece carrying a heavy load (ha!) of the first 80 pages (1/3) of the book and the other pieces considerably shorter in general. The opening essay involves John McPhee working with […]

Hannibal

Hannibal by Thomas Harris

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I think this is the final Hannibal Lecter book. Or at least the final book that moves the story forward. I know there is a prequel book that doesn’t remotely seem interesting. The strength of Red Dragon is that so much has clearly happened before we get there that we’re playing catch-up the whole time. The same thing happens with Silence of the Lambs as well, since for most people, this was their entry point to the character. The real issue with this book is […]

Kamby Bolongo Mean River

Kamby Bolongo Mean River by Robert Lopez

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This is a novel from 2009 by Robert Lopez who did not in fact fact write for Avenue Q, even though I thought he might have. That’s a different Robert Lopez. In this novel, we get 175 pages of un-chaptered thoughts and moments from our narrator. There’s no chapter breaks but each little segment is only a few lines long through maybe a page at the longest. These are almost tiny pensees here. The narrator is in some kind of institution. It’s not clear for […]

Thomas Mann Stories

Blood of the Walsungs by Thomas Mann

Tristan by Thomas Mann

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“The Blood of the Walsungs” In this novella, a Prussian entrepreneur of Jewish descent (always a little dicey in German literature) starts a family and has children. His youngest children are the twins, Siegmund and Sieglinde. We meet this family as the twins are in their early adulthood near the marriage of Sieglinde and a businessman. As we move our way forward in the story we are slowly made to understand that the twins’ connection is much stronger and stranger than mere brother and sister, […]



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