Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Shiloh isn’t haunted – men are haunted. Shiloh doesn’t care.”

Red Dragon by Thomas Harris

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I am just not sure if I can see what the big deal is with this book. I know some people find it incredibly frightening: a co-worker stole my mother’s copy of this book off her desk and then didn’t come to work for four days because she was too scared to get out of bed; I just found it slightly boring. I know I didn’t find anyone in it the least bit likable. I felt like I had wandered into the middle of a […]

Psycho Killer…Q’est que ce?

The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris

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The other night, I watched The Silence of the Lambs and became confident that it’s one of my all-time favorite movies. However, it got me thinking about the book. It’s been years since I read it and I could only vaguely recall the differences between the two. So after I was done, I decided to check it out for the first time in a long time. It’s a good book, at times very good, but perhaps not a great one. Harris’ great creation: the menacing Dr. […]

The confluence of stupidity and evil incarnate

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Between 1968 and 1985, a series of double murders horrified the province of Florence, Italy. These murders have been laid at the feet of Il Mostro di Firenze, The Monster of Florence. Douglas Preston, author of Relic and other novels with his writing partner Lincoln Child, moved to Florence to write a novel, only to find that one of the aforementioned murders happened across the street from his house. Thus began a years long fascination with the serial killer, and the abandonment of his very purpose for […]

By now, I think we’ve established Hannibal would just eat Thomas Harris

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When I was about eight and my brother was about six, we asked our mother what her favourite films were. “Silence of the Lambs”, she said, “And Four Weddings and a Funeral.” Cut to three weeks later, when my parents were at the neighbours’ and we were bored, so they allowed us to go home to watch TV. We browsed the TV guide and discovered my mother’s favourite film was on TV. We figured we’d watch it. My brother made it until the part where […]

This Book Was Delicious: Hannibal

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  Prompted by the impending second season finale of “Hannibal” I decided to go back and re-read Hannibal by Thomas Harris. Much of this season had been culled from this particular book, so I thought it would be interesting to see how and where the story diverged from the original, since showrunner Bryan Singer does not have the rights (yet?) to the Clarice Starling role and she is a major character in the novel. I actually liked Hannibal better the second time around. Singer was brilliant to develop the TV series […]



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