Paul Auster – Cannonball Read 17

Paul Auster (1)

Bloodbath Nation by Paul Auster

January 27, 2023 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

“I have never owned a gun.” Paul Auster begins this…not quite polemic…with a story of being given a toy six shooter and watching tv and doing the kinds of things kids did (especially boys) in the US for the longest of times. I imagine it still happens, but not as much. Later he describes being involved in camp or 4-H level shooting competitions. This is a pretty regular way that a lot of American people have guns in their lives in early years. The most […]

Kneeling in the fragrant moist grass of the village green Clara Morrow carefully hid the Easter egg and thought about raising the dead, which she planned to do right after supper.

The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny

The Last Colony by John Scalzi

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carre

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque

My Mum is a Twat by Anoushka Warden

Bella Bella by Harvey Fierstein

Intimations by Zadie Smith

A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

The Terminal Man by Michael Crichton

Leviathan by Paul Auster

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

The Light of Day by Eric Ambler

Omeros by Derek Walcott

Humiliated and Insulted by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Rumble Fish by SE Hinton

Becoming Abigail by Chris Abani

August 19, 2020 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

The Cruelest Month – 3/5 Stars This is the third Louise Penny “Inspector Gamache” detective novel, and I think it’s a decided dip in quality from an overarching look at it. The mystery itself, quaint, small town, punctuated with poetry and art and other little considerations is perfectly interesting. At a seance, from a combination of fright and maybe poisoning, a woman is found dead. There must be an elaborate set of circumstances to come to pass to have her die, but if they were […]

Brooklyn, Brooklyn Take Me In

The Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster

January 26, 2020 by jeverett15 Leave a Comment

This book shouldn’t work and in many ways doesn’t. The narrator should be unlikable, but I liked him. The plot relies on seemingly intelligent people behaving incredibly stupidly. There are entirely too many coincidences of the type that mostly went out of fashion around the time Charles Dickens died. And yet… Nathan Glass is a divorced and retired cancer survivor who decides to spend his remaining years in Brooklyn. Detested by his ex-wife and in a fight with his only daughter, Nathan lives a solitary […]

Stories without endings can do nothing but go on forever, and to be caught in one means that you must die before your part in it is played out.

City of Glass by Paul Auster

Ghosts by Paul Auster

The Locked Room by Paul Auster

June 16, 2019 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

I think I either almost read or tried to read this when I was younger — college aged or so — and for whatever reason didn’t. I kind of wished I had stuck with it, because I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more then. That’s not to say that a) I feel like I have missed out all these years or b) that I happen to like it now. I didn’t exactly like this book, and maybe don’t feel like I have […]

A Collection of Entertaining Postmodern “Mystery” Novel(s).

August 25, 2018 by Halbs 1 Comment

I stumbled onto this book because I was chatting up an acquaintance and I mentioned I was into hard-boiled mysteries. He said, “Oh, you might like The New York Trilogy“. In retrospect, that’s like saying, “Oh, you like the show Friends? You might also like the movie Requiem for a Dream. It also has stuff about friends and family dynamics!” This is…different than what I had in mind. The only other way to talk about this book is to talk about talking about this book. […]

There is no escape from this. Either you do or you don’t. And if you do, you can’t be sure of doing it the next time. And if you don’t, you never will again.

June 19, 2018 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

I don’t know if you’ve read much Paul Auster. I have read a few of his….namely the one I most remember is Brooklyn Follies, which is a perfectly good book about a bookshop owner in a Brooklyn neighborhood dealing with the changing face of the city etc etc. It was nice, if sentimental. So, this one is definitely NOT sentimental. This is a set of diary entries written by a woman named Anna Blume living in an unnamed city in a unnamed future where an […]

Zirza on A Gothic Classic for a ReasonIt's one of those wish-you-could-read-it-again-for-the-first-time books. I loved it.
Emmalita on “It came to something when you found yourself hoping that the footsteps you heard were ghosts.”I loved the ending! I don’t think it’s been out long enough to talk about why though.
Dixie on Track Her Down by Melinda LeighI am just starting Track Her Down and I have read them all in order till now and thought I...
Roland of Gilead on How can you give us the gift of a crazy character named Rando Thoughtful and then just as suddenly take that gift away? We need to talk, Uncle Stevie.I came across this randomly years after it was written because I was searching "Random Thoughtful. But I have the...
Emmalita on “Only you, Em, would refer to heartbreak as a distraction. I think I would have a more sympathetic response if I asked to marry a bookcase.”Oh my goodness, Gallifrey was beautiful. I’m sure her mittens were gloriously murdery.

Help Our Mission