Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Shorts

The Didomenico Fragment by Amor Towles

The Gentlemen from Peru by Andre Aciman

On Blueberry Hill by Sebastian Berry

Good Enemy by Yilong Liu

The Snowman by R.L. Stine

The Cat Who Saved Books by Sōsuke Natsukawa

Dusk and Other Stories by James Salter

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The Didomenico Fragment This story by Amor Towles takes place all in New York City, with Brooklyn being posed almost as a foreign country. The narrator is an aging art critic and scholar who was recently in possession of a small fragment of a Renaissance masterpiece. He’s approached by an art dealer who asks him about selling the fragment, but he laments that he sold it years ago. This leads to an idea. Early in the story he talks about how being retired, even comfortably, […]

Everything is Just So…Overheated

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Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman My rating: 4 of 5 stars Elio is the son of two professors. His father is a famous historian who hires a summer graduate student to join the family on their Italian Riviera estate (who wouldn’t want that gig) and help sort research and correspondence. As the book opens, Elio is preparing to welcome the newest intern, Oliver. Oliver arrives and Elio gives him a cool reception. The frigidity between the two continues for a period before […]

Grateful to never again be a teenager

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Ugh. Youths. I understand that the writing style and descriptions and the poetry in the prose are beautiful in this book, but that doesn’t solve the simple problem that we spend all 300 pages in the head of a 17-year-old and 17-year-olds are insufferable. I would have rated this book higher but it so accurately portrayed a kid in love that I couldn’t help but gag. Teenagers overthink. People with unrequited crushes overthink. Teenagers with unrequited crushes oh holy shit. Even when it turns out the crush […]

36: I honestly liked the movie (but not Armie Hammer) better

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In mid-January, one of our local theaters screened the film Call Me By Your Name. I knew it was a queer love story starring Armie Hammer and some new kid, but that was about it. I didn’t know there was a novel even. I spent the first half hour of the film skeptical, but I was absolutely in tears by the end of it. I put the novel on my TBR afterward, because I wanted to see how it stacked up against the film—normally, I […]

“Look me in the face, hold my gaze. And call me by your name.”

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Call Me By Your Name was one of two 2018 Best Picture nominees that I didn’t see until after the Academy Awards (the other was The Post) but damn did it rip me apart. I was perfectly happy to see Shape of Water win over Three Billboards but CMBYN was so beautiful and Timothée Chalamet was robbed so in my heart of hearts I will always been disappointed it only received one Oscar. That Oscar went deservedly to James Ivory who adapted André Aciman’s novel of the same name. I had every intention of […]

♪ Far Away the Falcon Flew, Now I Want to be Near You… ♫

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Where to begin with this one? In anticipation for the film adaptation of Call Me By Your Name coming out later this year, I chose to read André Aciman’s novel on which it is based. Well, actually, it’s not so simple as that: I wasn’t sure if I wanted to see the film at all, for some reason that I can’t really explain. And so, for some reason, I figured that reading this book first would tell me if I wanted to see the movie? […]



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