Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Great Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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I was watching a bunch of kids last week and after a full morning at the pool there was a moment of quiet as they all became engrossed in their various screens. I didn’t want to disturb the peace and I also didn’t want to do chores, and I couldn’t find my Kindle, so I reached over the bookshelf and I picked up the dog-eared copy of The Great Gatsby that I purchased in approximately 1999 – I was delighted to see my youthful handwriting […]

Extra Reading March 2022

Batman: The Killing Joke by Christa Faust and Gary Phillips

The Big East: Inside the Most Entertaining and Influential Conference in College Basketball History by Dana O'Neil

In The Country We Love: My Family Divided by Diane Guerrero

The Banks by Roxane Gay, Ming Doyle (Illustrator)

One Night, New York by Lara Thompson

The Secret Lives of Married Women by Elissa Wald

Lost and Found in Harlem by Delia C. Pitts

Beautiful Little Fools by Jillian Cantor

Beauty Queens by Libba Bray

Scandal in Babylon by Barbara Hambly

Sadie by Courtney Summers

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These are the books I finished in the month of March in which I didn’t have time or words to elaborate on… Batman: The Killing Joke *** Two of my favorites team up for a Batman prose novel? Yes! But the end result is just okay. Interestingly enough, I think both writers do a better job with the random Gothamites than they do with the Caped Crusader and his primary nemesis. You’re fine just reading Alan Moore’s legendary graphic novel. The Big East: Inside the […]

Lost in (audiobook) translation

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel of the Jazz Age hit a milestone birthday- 95!- meaning that it fell into the public domain at the end of 2020. One of the podcasts I listen to, Planet Money, used that milestone as a reason to release a podcast episode that was an audiobook of the novel, as read by its hosts. Its been years since I last read The Great Gatsby, and in that interim I’ve read Ernest Hemingway’s non-fiction account of his time in Paris in […]

500 words on how I have nothing to say

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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There can’t possibly be something left to say about this book. It’s been a keystone in the American education system since the 1960s, with literally millions of students reading and analyzing this book. To some degree, this is a testament to the timelessness of the novel, and I can’t imagine being an English teacher having to dredge this text year after year. But I’m not an English teacher. I’m just a guy who skipped most of the required books that serve as the glue to […]

Can’t repeat the past?…Why of course you can!

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I reread The Great Gatsby for about the 20th time (and third time in the last calendar year). Here’s what 11th graders have to say about it. I made them “Tweet” their reviews, hence the hashtags: “Overall all I didn’t like the book, it wasn’t very good and I feel it is very confusing to the young mind. Although that’s probably just because I’m not very smart.” “It was alright.” “I personally think that this book is an OK one, but I think some people […]

Beautiful prose, sexy twenties parties and all that jazz.

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“No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.” Right, so the Great Gatsby. I‘m pretty much on a quest to re-read all the classics that I read as a teenager and never really got. The Great Gatsby is one of those romanticized novels that most people say is about Gatsby who’s hopelessly in love with Daisy. So much in love that even though she basically dumped him by telling him “Hey-yo I’ll be marrying someone […]



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