Don DeLillo – Cannonball Read 17

C I Yikes

Libra by Don DeLillo

Poisoner In Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control by Stephen Kinzer

The Ghost by Robert Harris

September 5, 2024 by Jake Leave a Comment

Recently, I read three different books featuring CIA chicanery (two were fictional). This was unintentional but I figured since the themes were similar, I’d just batch review them rather than do individual ones. Libra***** This was a re-read. I liked it the first time. I loved it now that I: a. had a better since of the Oswald timeline after reading Posner’s Case Closed and b. could appreciate the meta-narrative structure in a way I couldn’t before. This is the only DeLillo book I can really […]

Deep Thoughts With Jack Gladney

White Noise by Don DeLillo

February 14, 2023 by jeverett15 2 Comments

Jack Gladney is obsessed with death. As a professor of Hitler Studies, a field he pioneered, death plays a large part in his career. But he’s also obsessed with his own death. He and his fourth wife Babette frequently discuss which of them will be the first to die. Their conversations about death, and all other matters really, are circular and esoteric. They continue to be so even after an ecological disaster (very similar to recent real-life events in Ohio) makes the prospect of death […]

White Noise

White Noise by Don Delillo

July 7, 2022 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

This is another reread. I first read this book in 2003 or so when I was in college, and while I enjoyed a lot about it, I can’t say I understood much beyond the weird story. There’s a Beckett-like element at play within this novel, as so many of the fat-rendered glut of modern life is broken down into elemental language that gives us both narration and dissection at the same time. It’s like a mid-century suburban novel written by a robot. Our narrator is […]

First mixed bag of the year!

Love Story by Erich Segal

In Bluebeard's Castle by George Steiner

Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton

Masscult and Midcult by Dwight Macdonald

Running Dog by Don Delillo

Chronicle in Stone by Ismael Kadare

Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowksi

Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe

War in Val D'orcia by Iris Origo

Through Blood and Fire at Gettysburg by Joshua Chamberlain

February 22, 2022 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

Love Story – 2/5 What do you say about a 50 year novel that feels dead on arrival? This is the novel that became the movie that is often referenced, and seldom watched. The novel is fine. It’s depressingly fine. Our narrator goes to Harvard, meets a girl, they get married, he goes to law school, she gets sick, and she dies. In the middle he loves her father, because he hates his father. His parents mildly but not so mildly disown him (lucky), and […]

“Why follow me to higher ground? Lost as you swear I am Don’t throw away your basic needs Ambiance and vanity”

Great Jones Street by Don Delillo

Smoky Joe's Cafe by Bryce Courtenay

The Divine Comedy by Dante

The Junkie Quatrain by Peter Clines

The Eye of the World by Robert Jones

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Gone to Earth by Mary Webb

Guns of Avalon by Roger Zelazny

The Earth is Weeping by Peter Cozzens

December 6, 2021 by vel veeter 3 Comments

Great Jones Street – 3/5 Stars This is an early Don Delillo novel that is ostensibly about a rock musician who seems to be in his mid-to-late 30s, living in a hotel on Great Jones Street in New York City. I don’t know a ton about New York, but I did happen to see Great Jones Street this summer, and these days, it’s a relatively bland and corporatized street in lower Manhattan. In the novel of the novel, it’s a little more sinister feeling, but […]

Thanksgiving Short Books

The Beautiful Struggle by Ta-Nahisi Coates

Buck by MK Asante

Yellow-Back Radio Brokedown by Ishmael Reed

Guerilla Warfare by Che Guevara

The Crazy Kill by Chester Himes

The Double Helix by James Watson

Pafko at the Wall by Don Delillo

Williwaw by Gore Vidal

The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By by Georges Simenon

The Mahe Circle by Georges Simenon

The Hand by Georges Simenon

The Engagement by Georges Simenon

Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata

Beauty and Sadness by Yasunari Kawabata

Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata

The Promise by Damon Galgut

Consider This by Chuck Palahniuk

Gerald's Party by Robert Coover

November 23, 2021 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

The Beautiful Struggle – 5/5 Stars I never taught in Baltimore City, but I did teach in Baltimore County, where Ta-Nehisi Coates spends part of high school. (I was two schools over, but the idea was pretty much the same there). So the result is some familiarity here. If I ever met Ta-Nehisi Coates, I think what I would want to tell him is when I was brand new to Baltimore, so when I scheduled my meeting with the MVA (DMV) I went to the […]

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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