Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

They were supposed to stay at the beach a week, but neither of them had the heart for it and they decided to come back early.

The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler

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This is the 1985 Anne Tyler novel which became the movie starring Kathleen Turner, William Hurt, and Geena Davis who won an Oscar for her role. The novel begins with a benighted vacation where the married Sarah and Macon are quickly realizing (or Sarah is) that the marriage is dying. We learn before long that their son, twelve year old Ethan, died more than a year before (shockingly from murder), and they can’t hold on any more. We learn that Macon is a creature of […]

When Joe Starling was ten years old, his father’s bank foreclosed on a fieldstone mansion which was by then a depressing ruin standing by itself in the middle of a fourteen-section cattle pasture.

Keep the Change by Thomas McGuane

"A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" by David Foster Wallace

Night-Flight by Antoine St Exupery

Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler

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Keep The Change – 2/5 Stars This is a novel by Thomas McGuane, mostly known for Western and Southern novels that have an air of seriousness to them and a lot of ironic gesturing and clippy dialog. I’ve previous read one of his short story collections which was very strong, but he’s been around for awhile. This novel is ok, but I can’t say I connected much with it. Joe works as a teen on a farm that his father foreclosed on and the new […]

When Pearl Tull was dying, a funny thought occurred to her.

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler

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This is a 1982 novel by Anne Tyler, who wrote The Accidental Tourist and Breathing Lessons among two dozen or so other novels. She keeps cropping in Laura Lippman novel in terms of being another Baltimore writer who narrates a much more domestic version of middle class life in the city. And since she’s written so many books and used copies are everywhere (including in Little Free Libraries and other places) she’s pretty easy to lock down. In this novel, we begin with Pearl Tull, an older […]

would have been a nice little jaunt were it not for the casual racism

Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler

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Looking for a modern retelling of The Taming of the Shrew? May I suggest that your eschew this shrew and settle down on the couch with a big bowl of popcorn for another screening of 10 Things I Hate About You instead? 10 Things treats its characters with much more respect- I know- a teen movie from 1999 outranks Pulitzer winner Anne Tyler. I’m sure she’ll get over it. Vinegar Girl is often fun; our Kate spends her days working with preschoolers who are wise beyond their years, and her […]

I guess it shouldn’t have been surprising

Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler

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I am a sucker for a good modern retelling of a classic tale; I was an impressionable teenager in the era of Baz Luhrman’s Romeo and Juliet, and the innumerable “what if Shakespeare … but in high school!” movies that were an exercise in diminishing returns. With, of course, the exception of Ten Things I Hate About You. Sure, the poem that inspires the title is hokey as shit for a girl who’s as pretentious as Kat is, and it is SO VERY teen movie […]

Nice touch! But you know how songs, well, age.

Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler

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Part of what I am doing with my reading this year is trying to think about the books in their initial publication context. So if I happen to read something like Anne Tyler’s Breathing Lessons, published in 1988 and winner of the Pulitizer and finalist for the National Book Award, it’s hard not to look through the nominees and winners of those awards and look for the contrast of styles and picks. Anne Tyler beat Raymond Carver’s Where I am Calling From — his greatest hits collections, […]



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