Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Well.

The Vegetarian by Han Kang

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Well, this was a thing. This book is told in three parts, from three different perspectives: Mr. Cheong, Brother-in-law, and In-hye. All three parts, told over the course of about three years, are centered around a woman named Yeong-hye. She is in what appears to be a fairly loveless marriage with Mr. Cheong, who seems to pride himself on doing as little as possible. He works a job that pays him the most without requiring him to work hard. He’s not attracted to Yeong-hye, and […]

Racism is Racism, No Matter What Time Period

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Last summer I helped my boss chaperone his student study-abroad trip to Australia, and the class read this book on the plane going over. I was far more enticed with Air New Zealand’s extensive on-flight entertainment package, and so I spent my plane ride in the iron-a** challenge watching all six (extended) Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films instead.  Since returning, my boss has been passively placing The Secret River in obvious places on my desk, which I’ve learned is his silent way of […]

Yeah, I’d have snubbed it too

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This is my first bingo square attempt, for having been shortlisted for the Man Booker prize. And boy oh boy am I not surprised this didn’t get it.  I liked Then We Came To The End well enough; The Unnamed slightly less so. But MAN did I not care for this book. The plot revolves around our dentist protagonist and his attempt to track down the identity thief posting cultish religious (or anti-religious? The book insists it’s sort of both but reading this thing through […]

You pick your prince, and you know what he is

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CBR10Bingo: Award Winner Although the Man Booker Prize lists have long been a reliable source for new reading material, 2009 winner Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel never really appealed to me. I rarely read historical fiction, assuming it will either be stuffy and stilted and old-fashioned, or fluffy and cutesy and and old-fashioned. And while I may never become a huge fan of the genre, I can at least try to keep an open mind, particularly when it comes to reading more works by women. […]

This year’s surprise 5-star book

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Guys, I am not going to lie. This novel knocked me over in ways I was not expecting. I had resisted reading Lincoln in the Bardo for months, because I was not sure about how good it would actually be. But when it won the Man Booker Prize (still plenty of shade for the committee to open it up to Americans; guys, we DO have the National Book Award, you know), I caved and put in a library hold. The first twenty pages made me […]

As I Lay Dying…in a pub? On the seaside?

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I’d never read any Graham Swift before, but I picked up Last Orders in a thrift sale, not realizing that it had won a Man Booker Prize. I am trying to work my way through the Booker winners and nominees, and I’m just under half at my latest count. Swift is a contemporary British author, and I’ve heard his name mentioned many times in the academic work I referenced for my doctoral comps and beyond. I thought it was high time I gave him a […]



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