Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

It’s Always Those People

The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen

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“The Netanyahus,” is a fictionalized version of a real-life visit to an American campus by the father of former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The subtitle: “An account of a minor and ultimately even negligible episode in the history of a very famous family” is a succinct but entirely inadequate description.   The book is also about being part of the Jewish diaspora in America in the 50s and being Jewish anywhere throughout history. It’s also about Israel. The book is so readable primarily because it […]

An elegiac paean that didn’t convey what it’s author wanted

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

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In 1981, Bruce Springsteen was in talks with Paul Schrader to star in a musical that would, six years later, become Light of Day, and starred Michael J. Fox in one of his first non-comedic roles. The film was originally titled Born in the U.S.A., which Springsteen would use to title a song he’d been working on about a Vietnam veteran. After going through several home demo permutations, it would eventually be the center-point for his 1984 multi-platinum album of the same name, and helped […]

The best arguments in the world won’t change a person’s mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.

The Overstory by Richard Powers

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The Overstory is the type of novel I dread reviewing. At nearly 500 pages,  nine protagonists, and scores of literary and cultural references, there’s so much to unpack that a review could easily become a doctoral thesis if one had the time and inclination. To properly review, I would almost have to start over and take extensive notes as I read, planting even more stickies on all the pages that contain something interesting or pivotal. Reading this book was both exhausting and exhilarating. The novel is […]

I just want to find Arthur Less and give him a big hug

Less by Andrew Sean Greer

Less is Lost by Andrew Sean Greer

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When I received a copy of Less is Lost, the follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel I so enjoyed in 2018, I wanted to start reading immediately. But I also wanted  to reread Less, to see whether it would still delight me as much as I remembered. I summoned some self-control and started at the beginning, and I’m so glad I did. Less is the story of Arthur Less, a middling author who, to avoid RSVPing to the wedding of his former lover of nine […]

I can’t fully get on board the Underground Railroad

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

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Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad won both the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction, and part of me is sheepish that I can’t get behind that level of admiration. While the novel is powerful and at times poignant, I had a fundamental issue with its execution. The novel focuses on Cora, a young slave on a Georgia cotton plantation whose mother was infamous for having been the only slave to ever escape that estate. Cora is an outcast even […]

I can see why she won the Pulitzer for this, but it wasn’t completely to my tastes.

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

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I’m really glad I did the audio version for this one, because I’m not sure my raccoon brain (shiny things only!) would have had the patience to sit through it otherwise, and it’s worth sitting through. Robin Miles is, as always, a great narrator. This book wasn’t quite what I was expecting, either. I had actually never learned about the Great Migration in all my many (many) years of school, which is not really surprising, but is disheartening, so I was excited to get into […]



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