Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

This was a big storm and he might as well enjoy it. It was ruining everything, but you might as well enjoy it

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

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I hadn’t read this one before and I once read the opening chapter. It’s among the most Hemingway of the Hemingway, and is clearly a much more mature work than either A Farewell to Arms or The Sun Also Rises, but is maybe more measured than those are. We meet Robert Jordan, an American adjunct professor who has recently joined the anti-Fascist movement in Spain. He’s not exactly a Republican, and even seems to not entire understand what a Republican is, almost equivocating between the […]

It would be better alone, anything is better alone but I don’t think I can handle it alone.

To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway

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This is a curious and interesting (and ultimately pretty good) Ernest Hemingway novel from 1937. I have read all of Ernest Hemingway’s short fiction (including The Old Man and the Sea) but only one novel, The Sun Also Rise. Because of this, my sense of him as a novelist is quite incomplete, and in addition because The Sun Also Rises is an Ernest Hemingway novel technically, but is THE SUN ALSO RISES as an institution all its own, it’s hard to tell. Anyway, this novel […]

Mitten Kittens, Sonic Hedgehog, and a Better Understanding of Genes

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Space genes! Bloody space genes! If you’ve been keeping an eye on popular science news recently, you’ve probably come across the story of a comparative study between current astronaut Scott Kelly and his retired astronaut brother, Mark. Along with this came the breathless headlines, tweets and shares on how 7% of Scott’s DNA had changed after his time in space! They weren’t identical twins anymore! Which is insane!   NO!   Argh!!!   The media ran riot with the idea that massive changes had occurred […]

He may be able to turn a phrase, but I’m thinking Hemingway isn’t for me

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A few weeks ago, I put out a plea on my Facebook page – I had overlooked choosing a book for this year’s Banned Book Week. While emmalita sang the praises of This One Summer a book I already had on my to read list (which I did read that week), another friend gamely suggested that I read A Farewell to Arms since he was reading it as well. I checked out the audio offerings, and decided to give it a go since John Slattery […]

In which I show once again that I’m probably better suited to popular fiction

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I knew a Holly Golightly once. We met in an art class in high school, and went on to be friends in college, before I fell in love with someone else. We would spend time together after class: she taught me that putting my loofah in with the laundry extended its life and kept it cleaner. I accompanied her on a modeling gig, where the artist she posed for belittled me for pronouncing Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres’s name without a proper French accent. She ended […]



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