Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

a thousand apologies and what feels like a thousand reviews (through November 2023)

Edinburgh by Alexander Chee

The Committed by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld

Kindred by Octavia E Butler

Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Hinumegin er mars by Sólrun Michelsen

Trust by Hernan Diaz

How Westminster Works . . . and Why It Doesn't by Ian Dunt

Happy Place by Emily Henry

Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class by Owen Jones

The Establishment: And How They Get Away with It by Owen Jones

In the Beginning was the Sea by Tomás González

Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

The Secret of the Old Clock by Carolyn Keene

Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

The City & the City by China Miéville

A History of Burning by Janika Oza

Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute by Talia Hibbert

Africa Is Not a Country: Notes on a Bright Continent by Dipo Faloyin

Passion Simple by Annie Ernaux

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

Forget Me Not by Julie Soto

Hotel of Secrets by Diana Biller

The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain by Brett Christophers

The Late Mrs. Willoughby by Claudia Gray

Business or Pleasure by Rachel Lynn Solomon

A Tempest at Sea by Sherry Thomas

Politics On the Edge: A Memoir From Within by Rory Stewart

Rivals by Katherine McGee

Reign by Katherine McGee

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

The Iliad by Homer, Emily Wilson

Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America by Michael Harriot

The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff

10 Things that Never Happened by Alexis Hall

The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer

The Fraud by Zadie Smith

A Dangerous Kind of Lady by Mia Vincy

A Little Life by Hanya Yanighara

Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

Nick and Charlie by Alice Oseman

Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree

The Starting Over Game by girl_with_kaleidoscope_eyes

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Edinburg by Alexander Chee CBR15: Sex True fact, when someone British asked me what I was reading I pronounced this “Edin-BERG” and to their credit they didn’t laugh but instead asked, with some horrified sincerity, if that’s how Americans say it. It’s not! At least, not on purpose. It’s just how can the English language claim to have been invented in a country that seems to not have grasped even a shred of understanding of how the various letters in it work? I digress. This is […]

immediately engrossing and rage inducing in the best way

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

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CW: oh boy, galore. Two key ones will be racism of all sorts and violent, on-page sexual assault. I wonder sometimes who these people are, who’ve blithely existed on the planet wielding the fruits of American citizenship without anything more than an eighth grade hormone-filled trip to D.C.’s worth of awareness of the sins of their forefathers. Your visit to Maya Lin’s monument should be a step along the journey, not the end of it. Which is humbly to say, from my priviledged seat, Nguyen’s […]

We’re all the same to them

The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen

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“Yours is a lucky generation.” “I wouldn’t say we were so lucky,” Phuong said. “You’ve never appreciated what you have.” Her father waved his hand over the meal and Phuong squeezed her glass, bracing to hear the stories of her parents one more time. ……. “Phuong was bemused at how these tourists would want to spend their money and their day here, instead of at the beach, or at a fancy restaurant, or in a hammock at a rustic riverside café. The reason for such […]

Shorts

The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen

The Great Glorious Goddamn of it All by Josh Ritter

Summerwater by Sarah Moss

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The Refugees – 4/5 Stars This short fiction collection from Viet Thanh Nguyen follows up his debut novel The Sympathizer but is not that much like that novel. Both books are good, but like a lot of follow up fiction collections after a successful first novel, these represent a longer writing period as a newish writer is working to become establish. Among other reasons why this collection might be different and why it’s also successful is that Nguyen is a newly published writer, but is in […]

The Sympathizer – Viet Thanh Nguyen (2015)

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

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I read and reread the first page of this book several times before I finally powered through a little. The opening page is dense and intriguing, but it also clearly portends an immersive, intense, and bleak novel. It’s also clearly a complex novel (not very much like we tend to get these days). Our narrator is a double (or triple?) agent writing a kind of confession. An adherent to Ho Chi Minh Communism and the North Vietnamese war efforts, but also a mole in the […]

“As Hegel said, tragedy was not the conflict between right and wrong but right and right, a dilemma none of us who wanted to participate in history could escape.”

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

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Starting during the last days of the Vietnam War, the novel follows a mole working for a high-ranking South Vietnamese general who is evacuated from Saigon only to continue spying for the Viet Cong on American soil. This is a darkly humorous book, one that is equally hilarious and disturbing, amusing and sickening. There are grotesquely comical episodes, and scenes that will make you heave. The effect of events is increased by the claustrophobic atmosphere caused by the first person narration and the distance created […]



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