Cormac McCarthy – Page 2 – Cannonball Read 17

End of Year Final

Phases of Gravity by Dan Simmons

The Making of the President 1960 by Theodore White

The Peripheral by William Gibson

Stella Maris by Cormac Mccarthy

The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas

Why Orwell Matters by Christopher Hitchens

Liberation Day by George Saunders

My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell

December 31, 2022 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

Phases of Gravity One of the very few “realistic” novels by Dan Simmons. Usually his novels are science fiction, horror, fantasy, or some combination of those. Sometimes his books are noir or suspense, and even though those books take place in the real world, it’s just not quite the same thing as realism. Don’t tell Raymond Chandler I said this. This book was written in the late 1980s and our lead character Dan Baedecker is a retired astronaut who has also in recent years becomes […]

And I ride, and I ride

The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy

November 4, 2022 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

If you were interested in the question about whether or not Cormac McCarthy would ever publish another novel, you were sometimes treated to lamentations about how he was supposedly working on a grand, epic novel about incest called The Passenger. And then about six months ago his agent released a statement that he was indeed going to release not one, but two novels that circulate around the same story about a brother and sister. And here it is. It’s not epic it turns out, even […]

Plays

The Sound Inside by Adam Rapp

Men's Health by Daniel Goldfarb

Have a Nice Day by Billy Crystal, Quinton Peeples

Coal Country by Jessica Blank, Erik Jensen, Steve Earle

The Vanishing Negative by Aaron Mark

The Sunset Limited by Cormac McCarthy

A Streetcare Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

July 26, 2022 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

The Sound Inside – 3/5 Stars Written by Adam Rapp and starring Mary Louise Parker, this play is about a writing professor who had had some very minor success early in her career with a debut novel, and now almost 20 years later finds herself with no second novel, and worse, terminal cancer. In the play she thinks and talks about multiple topics, but the play is shaped around her interactions with a male student, young in the way she was once young, and fragile […]

Grab Bag

In Pharoah's Army by Tobias Wolff

Bullet Train by Kōtarō Isaka

Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe

The Missing of the Somme by Geoff Dyer

The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart

A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor

The Collected Stories of Breece D'J Pancake by Breece Pancake

Child of God by Cormac Mccarthy

Candide by Voltaire

A Shropshire Lad by AE Housman

On Animals by Susan Orlean

The Facts by Philip Roth

July 7, 2022 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

In Pharoah’s Army -4/5 The second memoir by Tobias Wolff (known for A Boy’s Life too) but covering his time in Vietnam. This memoir reads a lot like a Vietnam novel — faint with memories, covering topics, and episodic. It’s hard not to compare it to Tim O’Brien’s The Things they Carried (a “novel”) and If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship me Home (a memoir). In those two books Tim O’Brien likes to hide. There’s a few moments where […]

“We are all of us ill prepared for what is to come”

No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

January 30, 2020 by esmemoria Leave a Comment

I saw the film No Country for Old Men long before I ever read the book, and it is #2 on my list of all-time favorite movies. I’ve read two other books by McCarthy, Blood Meridian (brilliant but a very dense read) and The Road. Now that I’ve read No Country for Old Men, the movie really did the book justice. While I liked the book a lot, it’s one of those rare cases where I think the movie was a little better. Set in […]

I sent one boy to the gaschamber at Huntsville.

No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

January 13, 2020 by vel veeter 2 Comments

This is one of those novels that is in my head as just perfect or near-perfect in execution. That list also includes The Great Gatsby and The Metamorphosis and Heart of Darkness. It may or may have much to say about enjoyment or heights of reading or anything like that but about precision of form and content, and especially economy of language. I define literature in fiction as telling a story in the only possible way. So in this book, and this is a reread for the first […]

Zirza on A Gothic Classic for a ReasonIt's one of those wish-you-could-read-it-again-for-the-first-time books. I loved it.
Emmalita on “It came to something when you found yourself hoping that the footsteps you heard were ghosts.”I loved the ending! I don’t think it’s been out long enough to talk about why though.
Dixie on Track Her Down by Melinda LeighI am just starting Track Her Down and I have read them all in order till now and thought I...
Roland of Gilead on How can you give us the gift of a crazy character named Rando Thoughtful and then just as suddenly take that gift away? We need to talk, Uncle Stevie.I came across this randomly years after it was written because I was searching "Random Thoughtful. But I have the...
Emmalita on “Only you, Em, would refer to heartbreak as a distraction. I think I would have a more sympathetic response if I asked to marry a bookcase.”Oh my goodness, Gallifrey was beautiful. I’m sure her mittens were gloriously murdery.

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