Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

New Thoughts About Narnia

Aslan's Breath: Seeing the Holy Spirit in Narnia by Matthew Dickerson

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Aslan’s Breath: Seeing the Holy Spirit in Narnia by Matthew Dickerson My rating: 4 of 5 stars I grew up on The Chronicles of Narnia; they were my gateway to fantasy literature. Growing in a Christian community where there was some stigma about fantasy, but Narnia passed muster with its over themes of love and good vs. evil. As I grew up, I moved on to more “adult” fantasy such as Lord of the Rings, but still was interested in literary criticism about Narnia. That […]

“Reading is a pact of generosity between author and reader.”

Literature & Existentialism by Jean-Paul Sartre

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I picked up this little curiosity at a bookstore featured in Texas Monthly magazine. You know how people say you eat with your eyes first? The meal starts before you eat? I wonder if you sometimes start engaging with a book in a bookstore before opening the cover. In this case, I felt a little more adventurous while roaming the stacks. My TBR list was nowhere in sight. I was having fun making small talk, eavesdropping on the locals’ coffee circle, and just existing in […]

In search of found time: a short introduction to Proust

How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton

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How Proust Can Change Your Life is Alain de Botton’s often tongue-in-cheek ‘lifestyle guide’ based on lessons from the life of canonical author Marcel Proust, the author of In Search of Lost Time. Although Proust is a canonical author, I have not yet had the pleasure of reading him, nor was I very familiar with his life and background. De Bouton’s guide is interesting- and somewhat heartening- in illustrating how this great author had an inglorious start, wasn’t very good at getting or keeping a […]

Attention all people who love Jane Austen, I have a good book for you.

Jane Austen: The Secret Radical by Helena Kelly

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I was just sort of expecting a fun book where the author points out passages in Austen’s work that adds credibility to the idea that Jane Austen was a radical thinker for her time. And that does occur here. (Radical, by the way, has a bit of a different usage here, in that it mostly means someone who is open to new ideas, and to rejecting the old if that is the right thing to do. That word has a negative association now that isn’t […]

Literature was the passport to enter a larger life

At the Same Time by Susan Sontag

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Before I read this book I had a lot of name recognition for Susan Sontag (thank you liberal arts degree) but wasn’t that familiar with her actual writing.  At the Same Time is a collection of her essays and speeches, published posthumously in 2007, and comprising three categories: 1) essays about obscure literature; 2) essays about 9/11; and 3) speeches Sontag gave on varied themes (literature, courage, etc.). Given that the major unifying thread for this collection is loose- essay or speech- my opinions on […]

“The House of Fiction Has Many Windows, But Only Two or Three Doors.”

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It keeps surprising me that whenever I go looking for a book on writing, it’s much less a ‘how-to’ and much more a literary criticism of the Greats. This isn’t a bad thing, it’s just not what one expects when selecting a book called “How Fiction Works.” But Wood isn’t interested in telling his reader to go find a pen, write some words down and assess if they’re any good based on certain literary principles. Instead he presents us with what’s out there in the literary […]



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