Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


About vel veeter

CBR 8
CBR 9
CBR10 participant
CBR11 participant
CBR12 participant
CBR13 participant
CBR14 Participant
CBR14 Bingo Badges
CBR15 Participant
CBR17 Participant
CBR18 Participant

vel veeter's Reviews:

The Price of the Ticket

The Price of the Ticket by James Baldwin

Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin

Nobody Knows My Name by James Baldwin

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

No Name in the Street by James Baldwin

The Devil Finds Work by James Baldwin

by Leave a Comment

The Price of the Ticket This is a big collection of James Baldwin essays and nonfiction from about 40 years or of writing. I tend to be a bigger fan of James Baldwin’s nonfiction more than his fiction in part because I think the poetry of his brain and language elevates his nonfiction in such a big way. In his fiction, it still works, but it’s less powerful for me. Some of the not previously printed highlights include “A Talk With Teachers”  – In this […]

Aspects of the Novel

Aspects of the Novel by EM Forster

by Leave a Comment

This is a collection of eight lectured that EM Forster delivered in 1925 or so about the different elements of the novel. I think it mostly still holds up, so long as your aim is not grad or professional literary criticism (and probably still plenty if it is). The book is divided into the different “aspects” like story, plot, people, style and rhythm, etc. The primary distinction that I think makes this collection interesting is between story and plot. And this is something that I […]

White People

White People by Allan Gurganus

by 1 Comment

One of the weirdest literary phenomenon is when a writer puts out some piece of writing that just absolutely captures the attention of readers, and then there’s a follow-up scramble to capitalize on that success. In some cases, it’s downright embarrassing for those involved when say a drawerful of juvenilia gets published and ultimately kills the momentum and even sometimes the writers’ career as a consequence. Sometimes a not great second novel appears soon thereafter, and it turns out it was written long before the […]

Sliver

Sliver by Ira Levin

by Leave a Comment

I grabbed this book at a book fair for free. It was not free so much as the book fair had a deal where you could bring a bag in and they would charge you five dollars to fill the bag up. So this book was more or less free, and given how thin the book was, and how over stuffed the bag was, like I said, it’s essentially free. Wow, you’re thinking, you’re really spending a lot of time explaining just how free this […]

Election and Tracy Flick can’t Win (and Little Children)

Election by Tom Perrotta

Tracy Flick Can't Win by Tom Perrotta

Little Children by Tom Perrotta

by Leave a Comment

Election I wanted to reread Election, even though I read it a few years ago, because they produced an audiobook version of it in connection to the sequel coming out. Election is still very very funny and insightful, and one of the few books that I read where it actual feels like the person writing it has worked in a school, or spent enough time with a school to narrate the experience. It’s also a very outdated time capsule of a book now. The sentiments […]

The Old Gringo and Bierce stories

The Old Gringo by Carlos Fuentes

The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and Other Stories by Ambrose Bierce

by Leave a Comment

The Old Gringo This is a 1985 novel by Carlos Fuentes. It takes place in the middle of the Mexican Revolution and begins with a stranger coming to town. The stranger is referred to as the “Gringo” or the “”old Gringo” for the entirety of the novel, and we’re told first what everyone in the town assumes about him, some of which ends up being true. We learn that he is tall and straight-backed, that he is washed, shaved, and perfumed, and that he has […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo