Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

All ghosts were once alive

The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

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I read Jane Eyre many, many years ago, when I was around 13 or 14 I think – long enough ago that I don’t recall exactly the experience of reading the novel itself beyond vague memories of the language being stuffy. I’ve seen iterations of the novel in many different movies and television shows over the years – I think most of us know the basic story by now (and if you don’t, Wikipedia will gladly spoil the novel for you, or provide a sufficient reminder […]

The madwoman in the attic.

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I don’t know why I’m surprised I didn’t enjoy this. I nearly always react poorly to post-modernism. But, I really *wanted* to enjoy it. Every time I’ve read Jane Eyre, I’ve thought Bertha Rochester, née Mason, got a really shit deal. I’ve also thought it was really suspect that we don’t actually get any evidence of her going mad prior to being locked in an attic for years and years. I mean, if I’d been locked in an attic for that long maybe I would start […]

Weird mix of weird

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Across Five Aprils: 4/ 5 Stars This is another Civil War book, and another Civil War book taking place in the midwest, that I read as a kid. I grew up in the South and thought about the Civil War a LOT. It happens. Anyway, like Rifles for Watie mentioned in the previous one, this focuses on the western theater of the war but still deals a lot with the news from the East. This becomes a kind of interesting conceit, where our main character […]

Nothing. I must be solid as an oak. Except when I cry.

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If the earlier collection of stories by Robert Musil provides a lamentation on the loss of teleology, then this book is a kind of celebration of it, at least through the eyes of its protagonist. Protagonist is such an important distinction in this novel, like many others, from the idea of a “hero.” It’s something I have to teach my students again and again. The protagonist is our focal point, not our hero. A protagonist can indeed be a hero, but it’s not required. We […]

Pardon the Nekkid Cover

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I think this, of the three I have read so far, has the strongest sense of scope, pace, and subject. The idea here is that a youngish woman who was carrying on an affair with a married man got pushed to the edge and ended it. As she storms off, he prepares ways to remove her from his life. This means making she sure she is cut off financially, making sure she won’t “make a scene” or “cause a fuss” and anything else that might […]

Hoping to see you soon. And my landlord has complained about her too.

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In this novel, a young woman recently emigrated from the Windward Islands (today called Dominica) after her father has died finds herself in the unclear position of a stateless and familyless woman, when such things were not the most stable of situations. She works partly in the demimonde (the kind of underworld of crime, but specifically vice) and realizes there’s a rough road between that world and any kind of “respectability.” She has love affairs, strong racial opinions, lots of alcohol, and dangerous situations, but […]



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