Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“I was born with a different kind of morality. The morality of an animal—of a crow or a fox or an owl—and not of a normal human being”

The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson

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This was extremely entertaining. I can see why people keep publishing and reading Peter Swanson books, if they are only chasing the high they got from this book. The other book I’ve read from him was also really great, but if this and Eight Perfect Murders are his best books, and some of the others are apparently abysmal, I might be done with him and will just go out on a high note (unless I start hearing from other people that his writing is back to up […]

Good lord almighty, this book was depressing. #CBRBINGO – Adapt

Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith

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I was really looking forward to this one, but was unfortunately thwarted in my enjoyment by my own delicate little flower feelings. As it turns out, this is one of those books I like thinking about, writing about, and talking about more than I do the actual experience of reading of it. It put me in a terrible mood, and made me very unhappy. Wait, I take back the delicate flower thing. I’m more like a sponge, soaking up the atmosphere around me. And the […]

Strangers On A Train-Stranger and Strangerer

Strangers On A Train by Patricia Highsmith

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Every once in a while I get a yen to read the source novel for one of my favorite classic movies. My most recent read (actually listen) is Strangers On A Train, by Patricia Highsmith. I have seen the classic Alfred Hitchcock film, featuring Robert Walker and Farley Granger, many times. There are some indelible, memorable scenes in that movie – the two men crossing legs and crossing lives on the train, the gold lighter which incriminates and absolves, the final deadly and hair-raising sequence […]

Oh? Friend?

Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith

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When Harry Potter 7 came out in bookstores, my brother, his wife, and I all went to the midnight release and bought three copies. We each spent the next few days reading it the same room at individual paces. Someone made a joke about a line where Harry and Ron are talking about their wands. And we sort of made out of context jokes like that for the next 3 days. This book had the same effect on me, except I definitely think this time […]

Being of Two Minds

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Patricia Highsmith might be best known for her Ripley novels and their film adaptations, but Strangers on a Train, her first novel, set the path for her career and has likewise been adapted several times, most notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. It is an unsettling, suspenseful psychological thriller that features brutal crime and some deep philosophical pondering. Guy Haines, an up and coming architect, is on his way home to Metcalf, TX, with the expectation that his philandering wife Miriam is going to finally […]



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