Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time
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When I compared them to Naomi, I sensed an unmistakable difference in refinement between those who are born to the higher classes of society and those who aren’t.

Naomi by Junichiro Tanizaki

June 6, 2019 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

Move over Lolita! But only a little bit to the side. This novel is about a man in his early thirties reflecting back on his pursuing his now wife. He tells us that he fell for her in a kind of way when he first saw her when she was 15 and he was 28. He expresses his own curiosity about why he would fall in love with a child, as her refers to her, but discusses this further by explaining that she reminded him […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: Junichiro Tanizaki, naomi

vel veeter's CBR11 Review No:321 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: Junichiro Tanizaki, naomi ·
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Mizuno always hated getting up in the morning.

June 11, 2018 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

This is a kind of minor masterpiece by the same author as Quicksand, Some Prefer Nettles, Seven Japanese Tales, and The Makiota Sisters. I have read two of his novels previously and a short book on writing as well. This novel is very bizarre and wonderful in a lot of ways, not the least of which because it was published in 1928 and feels both more ancient and more modern than that date would indicate. It’s about a novelist named Mizuno who is publishing a […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: in black and white, Junichiro Tanizaki

vel veeter's CBR10 Review No:194 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: in black and white, Junichiro Tanizaki ·
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There is nothing more. And yet…

April 29, 2018 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

This short essay lays out a Japanese aesthetic vision about the power of light to create darkness and shadow. Junichrio Tanizaki is writing in Japan of the 1930s, and as I have said in reviews previously of his work, this places him in an interesting and fraught position to argue for Japanese sovereignty and liberation of Western control, while also placing him well within the space of Japanese imperialism over the East Asian continent (especially China and Korea). So in arguing against the influence and […]

Filed Under: Non-Fiction Tagged With: in praise of shadows, Junichiro Tanizaki

vel veeter's CBR10 Review No:121 · Genres: Non-Fiction · Tags: in praise of shadows, Junichiro Tanizaki ·
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Audiobooks and Orphans

December 8, 2017 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

Miss Queenie – 4/5 Stars This is a brilliant follow-up to The Pilgrimage of Harold Fry that came out a few years earlier. Like very few, but very potent sequels, this one eclipses the original. While the original book is heart-warming and touching, something akin to the Straight Story meeting BBC2, this book is downright beautiful and devastating. Harold Fry was about a man who receives a simple and cryptic postcard from a former colleague from the time he worked for a local brewery. His […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: Arthur Conan Doyle, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Doris Betts, Dorothy Allison, joe hill, Junichiro Tanizaki, Rachel Joyce, Seven Japanese Tales, Strange Weather, the love song of miss queenie hennessy, the memoirs of sherlock holmes, trash

vel veeter's CBR9 Review No:478 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: Arthur Conan Doyle, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Doris Betts, Dorothy Allison, joe hill, Junichiro Tanizaki, Rachel Joyce, Seven Japanese Tales, Strange Weather, the love song of miss queenie hennessy, the memoirs of sherlock holmes, trash ·
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A Man, A Van, Japan: Two Reviews

The Van; Some Prefer Nettles by Roddy Doyle; Junichiro Tanizaki

November 9, 2017 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

The Van – Roddy Doyle – 4/5 Stars This is the third book of the Barrytown Trilogy by Roddy Doyle. The previous books are The Commitments and The Snapper. All three take place in a lower class neighborhood in Dublin, Ireland in the 1980s and spiral around various members of the Rabbitte family, a family who along with being desperately poor and loving, seem to have an endless number of kids coming and going. And like the difference between The Commitments and The Snapper, it’s […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: Junichiro Tanizaki, Roddy Doyle, Some Prefer Nettles, The Van

vel veeter's CBR9 Review No:450 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: Junichiro Tanizaki, Roddy Doyle, Some Prefer Nettles, The Van ·
· 0 Comments


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