Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Je me souviens

The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez

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A synopsis of the book on its cover reads: “three strangers are thrown together in one Manhattan apartment: a solitary writer; a Gen Z college drop-out; and a spirited parrot named Eureka.” Yes and no – yes, some may argue that it is the central story but for me that is generalizing just one aspect of the book. The Vulnerables is more about the musings and observations of the central character (the writer) from her point of view all centered around the onset of the […]

“Children long to be eaten. Everyone knows that.”

XO Orpheus: 50 New Myths by Kate Bernheimer (editor)

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Am I typing this up while wearing a tee featuring the cover of the d’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths? YOU KNOW IT! That strange tome of simplified myth and ultra-bright illustration cracked open a need in me when I was very young. I re-read that book countless times, and used it as the entry point into the larger world of mythology. Combined with a Catholic upbringing that was far more focused on the deaths of the saints than on anything else, you could saw I […]

What You are Going Through – Sigrid Nunez (2020)

What You are Going Through by Sigrid Nunez

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Yes it’s a new Sigrid Nunez novel with an animal on the cover and the book is about the death of a friend. But it’s not the same! First off, this has cats, but it’s not about cats. Not really. “The cat came in on little fog feet.” The book is about a narrator who has been asked to help a friend live out the remaining days after her cancer has returned. She was in remission, and the experimental treatments worked, and so the pain […]

Cuddle up by the fire, and maybe phone a friend?

The Friend by Sigrid Nunez

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This is a little (224) book that packs a real punch. I’m always intrigued to jump into a National Book Award Winner and when I saw this on my library book club “to read” for next year, and as I struggle to climb the peak of my cannonball, I saw a win/win opportunity to get this one checked off. If you judge a cook by its cover and see a swell dog, fun covers, and a sweet title you are going to be sorely disappointed. […]

It’s only insufferable to start

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In the beginning, I did not like this book. One of the main characters is a giant puppy but I felt like I was being slapped in the face with pretentiousness in every paragraph. None of the characters had names. The narrator was a writer describing all her writer friends – and talking endlessly about famous writers. Writers writing about writers writing about writers just never ends well. But somewhere, and I’m not sure where, I turned the corner. It must have been the dog. […]

Funny when you have to remind yourself about things that, not long ago, consumed your every thought.

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Brass – 3/5 Stars So on the one hand this book falls a little into the generic kind of circa 1990s second generation immigrant American novel that was big for a good while. I recently read Charming Billy by Alice McDermott, which does this very thing. And then on the other hand, this book is a solidly written novel. Or rather, it is a novel, but it a challenging kind of narrative. For one, the story is good and interesting, but also a little typical […]



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