Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Everybody knows that you’ve been faithful / give or take a night or two”

The End of the Affair (1951) by Graham Greene

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The End of the Affair exhumes a febrile wartime love affair between Maurice Bendrix, author, and Sarah Miles, wife of civil servant in the Home Security ministry Henry Miles. The affair is revisited retrospectively from Bendrix’s perspective, filtered through his authorly lens, hazy with self-righteousness, foggy with jealousy and thwarted passion–and then we get to visit it in real time via Sarah’s diary, which slices through Bendrix’s craft and self-centredness and desire and pretension with a steel blade forged in the fires of the Blitz […]

Graham Greene

A Gun for Sale by Graham Greene

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“Murder didn’t mean much to Raven. It was just a new job.” This is an early Graham Greene novel, and is probably most correctly labeled one of his “entertainments”. But like all the rest of the entertainments, there’s too much skill, talent, irony, and brain working here to find that an adequate label. Other entertainments like Our Man in Havana, are actually among my favorite of his books despite the incisiveness of The End of the Affair, The Quiet American, or The Heart of the […]

July 2022 Leftovers

The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware

From Crook to Cook: Platinum Recipies from Tha Boss Dogg's Kitchen by Snoop Dogg

Brighton Rock by Graham Greene

Plunder of the Sun by David Dodge

Stunt: A Mythical Reimagining of Nellie Jackson, Madame of Natchez by Saida Agostini

The Last Pirate of New York: A Ghost Ship, A Killer, and the Birth of a Gangster Nation by Rich Cohen

The Guest List by Lucy Foley

Defender of the Innocent: The Casebook Files of Martin Ehrengraf by Lawrence Block

Voluntary Madness by Vicki Hendricks

Two Gentlemen of Lebowski: A Most Excellent Comedie and Tragic Romance by Adam Bertocci

The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor by Gabriel García Márquez

A Night to Remember by Walter Lord

Slonim Woods 9: A Memoir by Daniel Barban Levin

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman

My Summer Darlings by May Cobb

The Cat Who Saved Books by Sōsuke Natsukawa

Firestarter by Stephen King

The Editor by Steven Rowley

Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson

Crossroad Blues by Ace Atkins

Lucky by Jackie Collins

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Here are reviews for the books I read in July that I didn’t have time or energy to do a full review on. Note: I was out of work in July so I read a lot. The Woman in Cabin 10 *** Read this while on a cruise ship and it definitely gave me some interesting feelings! A relatively entertaining thriller. I’d read another Ruth Ware book but wouldn’t rush out to do so From Crook to Cook: Platinum Recipes From Tha Boss Dogg’s Kitchen**** […]

An 80 Year Old Novel That Could Have Been Written Today

Brighton Rock by Graham Greene

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I originally bought Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock because I had it confused with The Winslow Boy, which are bizarre novels to mix up, I know. So I went into Brighton Rock with no expectations or knowledge about the plot. The main character—called the Boy or Pinkie—is a teenager defined by his nihilism and sociopathy, and is contrasted by several side characters: Ida who is open-hearted and decadant, and Rose, who falls in love with Pinkie. The Boy is the head of a small, violent gang. […]

“With a return ticket, courage becomes an intellectual exercise.”

The Quiet American by Graham Greene

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From 1951-54, Graham Greene was a foreign correspondent in French Indochina.  Contrary to the belief of some, Edward Lansdale (a pioneer of American intelligence operations) was not the inspiration for the character of Pyle (the titular Quiet American). Greene instead based the character on a man named Leo Hochstetter, with whom he shared a room and traveled to Saigon from Ben Tre. Hochstetter lectured Greene on finding a “third force” in Vietnam: a democratic alternative to colonialism and communism. The Quiet American takes place in […]

I was not sorry when my brother died.

Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga

Instead of a Letter by Diana Athill

House Made of Dawn by Scott Momaday

The Captain and the Enemy by Graham Greene

The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien

The Regulators by Stephen King

The Catherine Wheel by Jean Stafford

The Ascent of Rum Doodle by WE Bowman

The Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan

A Bullet in the Ballet by Caryl Brahms and SJ Simon

Skellig by David Almond

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Nervous Conditions – 4/5 This is one of those books that has been around for awhile, was highly lauded when it came out, and made the rounds in a few college courses and high school English departments. It was even given to me as a possible book to teach my first year of teaching for tenth graders. I promptly declined because I was brand new and didn’t have time to read something and create material for it. And I will be honest, I don’t like […]



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