Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

I’m not sure what was true

Almost True by Clarice Lispector

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I am not the reader for Almost True by Clarice Lispector. It did not “grab me” but I know several people will find this amusing and clever. The illustrations are unusual and have a little fun going on but are also not over the top silly. Yet, they are oddly abstract with a realistic touch, Once I realized that it was translated by Benjamin Moser I figured that it was the translation of things that was not being liked by my reading ear. The text […]

An Apprenticeship: I tried

An Apprenticeship by Clarice Lispector

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mood music: Só Tinha De Ser Com Você – elis regina and tom jobim I will accept that I am in the minority regarding this book. Based on the GoodReads score and the consensus on social media, I guess I don’t understand art. Clarice Lispector was a very talented writer, the prose itself is almost poetic in the way that it flows throughout the story, but thematically I could not get on board with this book. At first, I thought it was the translation from […]

Clarice Lispector

The Collected Stories of Clarice Lispector by Clarice Lispector

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“Now that the affair is behind me, I can recollect it more serenely.” This sentence opens up an early long story by Clarice Lispector, where a woman involves in an intense affair finds out what happens when things simply change one day. This story, from around 1950, feels like an early exploration of the end of passion, and not have the kind of judgment or consequential factors in it. This isn’t “Daisy Miller” or an Edith Wharton story, and it’s not there to exact punishment. […]

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The Machine Gunners by Robert Westall

Robot Visions by Isaac Asimov

The Between by Tananarive Due

Mad about Shakespeare by Jonathan Bate

Startide Rising by David Brin

The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green

The Woman Who Killed the Fish by Clarice Lispector

Real Hero Shit by Kendra Wells

We had to Remove this Post by Hanna Bervoets

The King's Indian by John Gardner

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The Machine Gunners – 4/5 I picked up this book because it was on the Guardian’s top 1000 novels list and since I had never heard of it, it sounded interesting. It IS interesting, and it’s more interesting that the title might otherwise suggest to you. There’s some irony in the title because the would-be “machine gunners” are a group of raggedy London kids during the blitz. This group is mad as hell that the blitz has otherwise disrupted their childhood, and the novel does […]

Fred forgot three things in a row before he reached the front door on his way to work.

Mrs Caliban by Rachel Ingalls

Puckoon by Spike Milligan

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Sea Monsters by Chloe Aridjis

The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector

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Mrs Caliban: 4/5 Stars This is a re-released novel from 1982, so if you’ve seen the cover but didn’t know about it, like me, perhaps you’ll be excused. It has a wonderfully smart and funny tone to the whole thing. We find our protagonist, a married housewife, doing household chores, thinking about the silence of her marriage, when she hears a news report of an escaped water monster terrorizing the town. She goes on, prepares for her day, and after time, the monster finds her […]



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