Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded

The Pearl by John Steinbeck

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Kino, Juana and their baby, Coyotito, live in a shack by the sea. They are indigenous as opposed to the conquerors living in the city nearby. Kino is a pearl diver as his ancestors have for generations. The family scrapes by, barely – they are so poor that Kino and Juana cannot afford to get married, or even have a christening for Coyotito. When Kino wakes up in the early dawn, during cock-crowing, he looks at the stars in the sky and listens to the […]

It was early spring, and the second day of our journey.

The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy

The Beggar by Naguib Mahfouz

The Thief and the Dogs by Naguib Mahfouz

Autumn Quall by Naguib Mahfouz

Deed of Trust by Claudia Allen

Dear Elizabeth by Sarah Ruhl

Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn

The Round and Other Cold Hard Facts by JMG le Clezio

Fire Down Below by William Golding

Cult X by Fuminori Nakamura

The Long Valley by John Steinbeck

Being the Change by Sara K Ahmed

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The Kreutzer Sonata – 4/5 Stars This is a strange murder story by Leo Tolstoy in which we find a man who murdered his wife for having an affair (having caught her in the act) and then in acquitted. I am not spoiling this story for you at all because all of this is told to you in the first few pages. But what comes out of this telling is more about the nature of his crime and how he found himself in the position […]

Dust to Dust

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

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  I’ve been feeling a little down about my reading during the shutdown and decided I needed to knock off one of the big classics sitting on my to-be-read list. Luckily, The Grapes of Wrath was close at hand. Unlike many, I was never assigned Steinbeck’s ode to the Okie in high school English, and for that I am thankful. (We read Of Mice and Men instead.) My teenage self would not have had the patience to put up with Steinbeck’s digressions and the length […]

Starting the new year with the most depressing book I’ve ever read

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

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Unintentionally, I am starting CBR12 with one of the most depressing books I have ever read. Of Mice and Men is a short novel — a “play/novelette” in the words of its author, John Steinbeck — published in 1937 and turned into a play and film almost immediately. I have to confess that I have no recollection of reading Steinbeck in my school days, but my 10th grader is going to be reading this soon so I thought I would check it out. I recommend […]

Some Steinbeck Non-Fiction

Once There Was a War by John Steinbeck

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I read this one in February when I stopped writing reviews immediately after reading a book. I do have a slightly valid reason for this delay, my wife gave birth to our youngest son. As one can imagine, my reading slowed to just audiobooks to and from work and I stopped writing reviews almost completely. This was in addition to trying to finish my thesis. It was a stressful time and most of it was a blur. Unfortunately, that means that I don’t remember Once […]

In Dubious Battle

In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck

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I think it’s in On Writing by Stephen King, where he says sometimes you read a book and think “I can do that.” And then there are the books and the authors that make you say, “I could never do that.” For me, John Steinbeck is one of the latter. There is something about the way he puts words together, that I know are in the same language I speak, but somehow form simple, spare sentences conveying more meaning than the individual words would suggest […]



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