richard wright – Cannonball Read 17

Shorts

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

Signed, Picpus by Georges Simenon

Vernon Downs by Jamie Clarke

The Man Who Lived Underground by Richard Wright

Horse Crazy by Gary Indiana

November 2, 2022 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

A Moveable Feast – 4/5 This is kind of a memoir by Hemingway, one that he was working on before he died. It’s not complete, but according to the editorial notes by one of his sons and grandsons, it’s close. This edition undoes some of the more confusing and intrusive decisions from the original publication in the 70s when Mary Hemingway was presiding over the book, which includes her basically writing one of the chapters herself. But the material cut from that edition are presented […]

“You asked me questions nobody ever asked me before. You knew that I was a murderer two times over, but you treated me like a man.”

Native Son by Richard Wright

December 23, 2021 by narfna Leave a Comment

My brain is mush today, but I have time to try and catch up on reviews, so I’m going to attempt to review a masterpiece of literature while coasting on an ebb tide of intelligence. This is, I believe, the book I have owned the longest without reading. I’ve moved ten times since I bought it in college for a class that didn’t even end up reading it. I have kept it all this time, through lo so many book purges, because I always meant […]

Violence is a personal necessity for the oppressed…It is not a strategy consciously devised. It is the deep, instinctive expression of a human being denied individuality.

February 4, 2018 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

Native Son is a challenging book for a lot of reasons. The language is rather straight-forward, but Wright gives us a character that commits first by accident, then on purpose, some of the most heinous crimes imaginable and asks us to reckon with it as readers. He does this through a trial scene that does not show us someone innocent being railroaded by the justice system, but by someone on trial for crimes they did commit being railroaded by the whole capitalistic system of the […]

Totalitarian Double Murder!

February 18, 2017 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

Because I recently read Invisible Man again and it’s long and draining and pretty much exactly from the same year as this book, I thought I would journal about this book as I am reading for a somewhat different sense of it. Section 1: Pages 1-150: This book starts off with a group of friends bullshitting in the street. As Cross Damon makes away from his group, he starts to feel a deeply encroaching stress and pressure take hold of him. We are subject to this stress […]

I Can’t Rate this Book (Spoiler Alert)

April 30, 2015 by Ale Leave a Comment

“Native Son” was on a reading list recommended by my University English department and since I’ve read maybe 5 African American novelists in my entire life, I felt it was time to start expanding my reading base. I made the mistake of reading the introduction first instead of just jumping into the novel, which ruined the experience for me a little since it gave away most of the plot and led me to expect a very different story than the one I actually read. […]

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.

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