Cannonball Read 13

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Elder LOTR/Holmes fan girl/writer since forever.

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Manly Men Doing Manly Things

The Painter of Battles by Arturo Perez-Reverte

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It didn’t take too long for me to realize who this author reminded me of.  Not particularly his style, but more his content.  Hemingway.  Coming from me, that is not a complement. Faulques is a professional photographer who specializes in the battlefield.  In Serbia, he photographs a young Croatian fighter, Markovik, and the picture wins a prestigious award, and is also published widely.  Unfortunately, it also makes Markovik himself famous, and his wife and child are killed.  Thus, he is searching for Faulques.  Meanwhile, Faulques […]

Life in Africa, But Probably Not at All What You Are Thinking Of

A Girl Is a Body of Water by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

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There was something about the writing of this account of growing up female in 1970s – 80s Uganda that struck me as different but I couldn’t quite place it.  And then I read an interview with the author wherein she explained that as an African writer writing in English, you have a choice.  Are you writing for an English-speaking audience, for whom explanations may be needed, or are you writing for your people?  Makumbi chose the latter, and the book becomes all the much richer […]

Yes, I Would Like to Move to This Village, Thank You

Little Snow Landscape by Robert Walser

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Cannonball Bingo – Landscape Robert Walser was a Swiss writer of miniatures, with works dating from 1905 to 1933.  As the title indicates, his earlier pieces are primarily short descriptions of the villages and forests of his youth.  And the man loved to walk.  “The Moon” describes a night stroll as he leaves his village and its Christmas market and climbs up into the forests and mountains.  I wished I could stand in the moonlit night forever and surrender to old dear thoughts, to stay […]

When You’re Too Hard Core for Raymond Chandler

Fast One by Paul Cain

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Bingo square – People This noir classic was created when Paul Cain patched together five stories that he had written for the detective magazine Black Mask.  Published in 1933, it soon became famous as the book that was just too hardboiled to be fashioned into a movie.  And seriously, it is, even by today’s standards.  Daaaaamn son. Paul Cain was by then a slippery character in Hollywood.  That was not his real name, nobody was quite sure where he was from (spoiler, Iowa, actually), and […]

Definitely one of the oddest childhood memoirs I’ve read

Germs: A Memoir of Childhood by Richard Wollheim

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Bingo Square Rep But not what you think.  Let Wollheim explain. “. . . such was the hope, I would, in saying one thing after another after another after another, each with a grain more of truth to it than its predecessor, come to spill the beans: I might, if only the ear stayed steady, and that was another hope, find myself, with one broad archaic gesture, scattering the germs.” Wollheim was born in England between the two wars to a German Jewish theatrical producer […]

Arteriosclerosis can begin as early as age 20, and other fun facts.

The thing about life is that one day you'll be dead. by David Shields

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Bingo Square  Free!  (doesn’t say I kept it :P) Well, now. See, the thing is that I have a verrrrrry long list of books to read, that I generally order from my county library. L.A. County Library is amazingly extensive. I’m rarely disappointed. But this list was started in the 1980’s, and all that is on the list is the title and the author, so when the book arrives for me to pick up, it’s nearly always a surprise. (No fair doing any research, that’s […]



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