Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A haunting and memorable journey

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

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Lincoln in the Bardo is a story that you chew on. You can’t just sip it and multitask and hope to passively absorb it. You have to pay attention and actively read (or listen, in my case). But it’s so rewarding when you finish it, and worth the extra mental effort. If you’re like me and thinking a Bardo is something like a bar, you are completely wrong my friend. In buddhism, a bardo is a liminal space between death and rebirth. So we are […]

The redemptive power of empathy

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

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Lincoln in the Bardo is a fitting novel to read during November, the month of the dead. Set in a Washington, DC, cemetery in February 1862, the novel combines real historical events and an imagined spiritual realm. This is a story about death and loss, moving on (or not), and redemption. As in the film The Sixth Sense, the dead of Oak Hill Cemetery don’t know they’re dead (or if they do, they are not saying so). These souls refer to their coffins as “sick […]

As our eyes met I saw that she had spoken in earnest.

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

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I have been avoiding/suspect of this novel since it came out. I tried to read it and didn’t like it so I stopped. Then, I got the audiobook and also didn’t want to keep going. I realize now that the time I was trying to read it I was injured and in pain, so maybe that was a factor. Had it not won the Booker Prize and had I not found myself thinking I should finish all the Booker novels, well I might now be […]

Episode 1-42: The Night is Dark and Full of Terrors

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https://killingmykindle.com/2018/11/12/episode-1-42-the-night-is-dark-and-full-of-terrors/ Wherein I review: 154. Worst. Person. Ever by Douglas Coupland 155. Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll by Peter Bebergal 156. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders 157. The Dark Defiles (A Land Fit for Heroes #3) by Richard K. Morgan 158. Desolation Island (Aubrey & Maturin #5) by Patrick O’Brian TRIPLE CANNONBALL ACHIEVED As my regularity falls apart like an Acapulco tourist’s bowel movements, I feverishly exploded across that third times a charm finish line.  Not quite […]

Buckle up, Saunders is gonna blow your mind right out of your butt

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I heard about this book on my beloved podcast, Literary Disco, as they gushed about Saunders, both in general as an acclaimed short form writer, and for this, his debut novel. It tells the real story of the tragic death of Abraham Lincoln’s young son Willie, but veers into the extraordinary as Willie is in a sort of limbo, surrounded by fantastical and verbose ghosts. He is visited by Lincoln in the graveyard, hence the title, and is struggling with whether to stay in this […]

This was a book? I read it. I liked it?

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There’s been a lot of talk about Lincoln in the Bardo over the past 18 months or so. It won a lot of awards, for sure. I finally got it from the library and I read it. And I have no idea, honestly, if I liked it or not. I did? There’s a lot going on here. Abraham Lincoln’s youngest son, Willie, has died and been laid to rest in a cemetery in Georgetown. Lincoln is mad with grief and spends the better part of […]



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