Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Rejoice and Be Glad, Because Great is Your Reward in Heaven

Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

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In the 1850s, America gained control of New Mexico Territory following the Mexican-American War. Subsequently, the Catholic Church decided to make a new diocese out of this new slice of rugged frontier America, populated for generations by Mexican settlers and many, many more generations by the local American Indian tribes. Closely based on historical figures, Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather tells a fictionalized account of two French priests sent to bring the far-flung and neglected territory back under the umbrella of Catholic […]

Seeing how a hand carves out meaning with a pencil point lets us remember that the human touch is essential

Act of God by Jill Ciment

The Grownup by Gillian Flynn

The Vacationers by Emma Straub

Accident/A Day's News by Christa Wolf

Wigs on the Green by Nancy Mitford

And Now You can Go by Vendela Vida

Victory over Japan by Ellen Gilchrist

Alexander's Bridge by Willa Cather

The Two of Them by Joanna Russ

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Act of God – 3/5 Stars This is a funny and odd little book by a writer I don’t really know, but as I did a little research into has been writing and publishing for a while. This book is told from an ever-shifting third person limited perspective following different women who are responding to a crisis they all share. Kat and her twin sister Edith are older twins living in the rent-controlled apartment that belonged to their late mother. Their mother was a famous […]

Men travel faster now, but I do not know if they go to better things.

Death Comes for the Archbiship by Willa Cather

The Last Reports of the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich

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I wasn’t entirely expecting to put these two books side by side in my own reading, but both sort of came up in their own way in my selection process. I knew the basics of the Willa Cather novel going in, so I probably internalized the Louise Erdrich novel’s plot as well as I chose. But not only do these novels include a Catholic priest as their central figure, but they also involve that priest working in the American (Mid)West and specifically ministering to Native […]

Good, I suppose? Does this even count as a western? I’m counting it.

A Lost Lady by Willa Cather

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And I am once again reminded that most of the time lit-fic is just not my thing. Willa Cather is good with words, but I just don’t get her writing. I chose this book as part of the Western challenge for Read Harder, and because I’ve owned it for years and years and years. It was a quick read, only 150 pages, and I read through it in a night. But I didn’t get very much out of it. A Lost Lady is about a […]

Love itself draws on a woman nearly all the bad luck in the world

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This is a small novella. It reminds me so much of a few different Henry James stories (with the obvious splash of Edith Wharton). The time period of 1900 to about 1930 (before the full thrust of the Lost Generation and Modernism is in full steam) is a weird time in both the United States and the United Kingdom. Mark Tawin and Henry James cross over with Edith Wharton and Jack London. In the UK, Yeats, Joyce (I know I know Irish), Doyle cross over […]

And that’s what makes men happy, believing in the mystery and importance of their own individual lives.

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This is just a very good novel written by a very good writer at the top or near top of her game. Among other things, this novel feels very modern and less nostalgic than O Pioneers or My Antonia, the former of which I didn’t like and the latter I loved, and the result is charming and sad and funny. Doctor St. Peter is a college professor who, for circumstances beyond his control, is being removed from his longtime residence in order to make way […]



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