Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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vel veeter's Reviews:

Graham Greene

A Gun for Sale by Graham Greene

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“Murder didn’t mean much to Raven. It was just a new job.” This is an early Graham Greene novel, and is probably most correctly labeled one of his “entertainments”. But like all the rest of the entertainments, there’s too much skill, talent, irony, and brain working here to find that an adequate label. Other entertainments like Our Man in Havana, are actually among my favorite of his books despite the incisiveness of The End of the Affair, The Quiet American, or The Heart of the […]

Clarice Lispector

The Collected Stories of Clarice Lispector by Clarice Lispector

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“Now that the affair is behind me, I can recollect it more serenely.” This sentence opens up an early long story by Clarice Lispector, where a woman involves in an intense affair finds out what happens when things simply change one day. This story, from around 1950, feels like an early exploration of the end of passion, and not have the kind of judgment or consequential factors in it. This isn’t “Daisy Miller” or an Edith Wharton story, and it’s not there to exact punishment. […]

Diana Cook

The New Wilderness by Diane Cook

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“The baby emerged from Bea the color of a bruise.” This novel was nominated for the Booker Prize a few years ago, and ever since Americans have been a more regular part of the nomination process, something I have mostly negative feelings about (there’s already plenty of American literature prizes, and I like following the nominations of book prizes for book recommendations), I have been more and more curious about the books that end up nominated. Some are also big in the US like Paul […]

Donna Leon; Jon Ronson; EM Forster

Death at La Fence by Donna Leon

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“The third gong, announcing the opera was about to continue, sounded discreetly through the lobbies and bars of Teatro La Fenice.” This is the first of the Commissario Brunetti mystery novels, which take place in Venice, and follow Commissario Brunetti as he solves various crimes. You know the drill. There are 32! of these novels now since they first started getting published in the early 1990s. I read a middle one of these awhile back and really liked it, and I don’t think I could […]

Paul Bowles

Their Heads are Green and Their Hands are Blue by Paul Bowles

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“Each time I go to a place I have not seen before, I hope it will be as different as possible from the places I already know.”   There’s a race against time in the packaging of this book to be the first to mention Edward Said. In Orientalism, Said frames the way we should look at colonial, Orientalist, and imperial writings, and really ask the key questions. Who gets to talk? What do they say? Who do they say it about? Etc. Said was an […]

Sue Burke

Semiosis by Sue Burke

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“The war had begun long before we arrived because war was their way of life.” I am not exactly sure what to make of this book in part because it pivots multiple times from start to finish. I almost wish it wasn’t the book it is, and is instead the book I thought it would be. That’s not really a fair criticism, except that the opening section of the book is very good and interesting, and then quickly pivots away from what I found to […]



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