Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The power of the spoken word on full display

The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

by 1 Comment

I experienced the classic novella Heart of Darkness through the animated voice of the acclaimed Kenneth Branagh, which I daresay is the ideal way to go about ‘reading’ this book.  It worked particularly well for two reasons: The novella is written in the style of a story that is being told aloud to his shipmates, so audiobook works particularly well Branagh’s interpretation of the text and intonation on certain phrases was, in my view, a preferable interpretation of the text than could otherwise be read. […]

“I felt I was becoming scientifically interesting.”

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

by Leave a Comment

Heart of Darkness was not required reading in any of my English classes and frankly, seemed like a huge bummer, so I never got around to it. But my husband was a big fan, so 17 years later, here I am, catching up. It was not what I expected. Plot: Charles Marlow is looking to make a name for himself as an explorer uncovering new lands, and so, this being the colonial period, he secures an assignment for himself in Africa. He is warned by […]

King Leopold

King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

by Leave a Comment

Hochschild begins this history with a recalling of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. It would be impossible not to. For most people in the world, if they know anything about the slave trade, enforced labor, and violent atrocities that happened in the Congo under the reign of King Leopold of Beligum and then the Belgian government, they primarily know about it because of Conrad’s book. Conrad’s book occupies a tense space in English literature for a few reasons. One, his language, his ideology, and his […]

I love the smell of colonialism in the morning

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

by 7 Comments

I was so disappointed in the last two books I read that I decided to shift gears and read something more “weighty.” I’d been missing beautiful writing and thought-provoking content, so I turned to my TBR list for ideas and came up with Heart of Darkness, a short novel that I’d always meant to read but had never gotten around to. It’s an important English novella published in 1899 by a Polish author about a British steamboat captain sailing through Africa; 80 years later it […]

Captain MacWhirr, of the steamer Nan-Shan, had a physiognomy that, in the order of material appearances, was the exact counterpart of his mind

Typhoon by Joseph Conrad

The Children of the Sea by Joseph Conrad

by Leave a Comment

Typhoon – 3/5 Stars This is classic storm story. What’s interesting about it, as is contained in the opening lines is that the captain of the boat is not remotely remarkable in any ways. He’s perfectly competent, and not a buffoon, but also not a hero. To me the idea of writing an adventure thriller where the main character does not stand out for his bravery, does not stand up to the challenge, or does not reveal some great moral failing or lack of character […]

The maddening and conclusive thought.

The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad

by Leave a Comment

This is a kind of funny novel. The tone is variable throughout — sometimes almost sarcastic and cynical, and other times more serious. The plot of this novel, as you can almost imagine, is about a secret agent. But this is 1907, and well, there’s not a whole lot of wars or cold wars going on. So the secret agenting that is going on is bent on anarchy and disruption of old regimes more than through the specific aims of spycraft and evangelical governmental policy. […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo