Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Ahmed Saadawi (1)

Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi

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“With regards to the activities of the Tracking and Pursuit Department, which is partially affiliated with the civil administration of the international coalition forces in Iraq, the special committee of inquiry set up under my chairmanship, with representatives of the Iraqi security and intelligence agencies and observers from U.S. military intelligence, has come to the following conclusions: a. On September 25, 2005, under direct political pressure from the Iraqi side, the activities of the Tracking and Pursuit Department was partially suspended for the purposes of the inquiry, […]

Louise Glück (1)

Marigold and Rose: A Fiction by Louise Glück

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“Marigold was absorbed in her book; she had gotten as far as the V.” Much like Mr Ramsay in To the Lighthouse Marigold has made far into her book. Unlike Mr Ramsay, Marigold can’t actually read. This is a small book, a short story really, by Louise Glück, who won the Nobel Prize a few years ago, but certainly not for her fiction. I like this little book, but that’s what it is, a little book. Louise Glück’s poems tend to intimate and intense affairs, and I […]

Mary Shelley (1)

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

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“You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.” In what is probably my 20th reading of the novel, I am beginning to wonder what more ideas and meaning I can squeeze from it. One of the nice things about teaching this novel is that students end up liking it in spite of themselves. There’s still some somewhat antiquated language and idiom, and there’s a set of references we need to […]

Madeline Miller (1)

Galatea by Madeleine Miller

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“It was almost sweet the way they worried about me.” I recently re-read the Richard Powers book Galatea 2.2 which involves a novelist feeding culture and conversation into an AI protocol and inadvertently trying to shape it into a lost love, while also piling assumption after assumption onto an actual woman for the same purposes, and it struck me, along with this short story by Circe and The Song of Achilles author Madeleine Miller, how important the naming of the stories plays into the understanding of it. For both […]

Chinelo Okparanta (1)

Harry Sylvester Bird by Chinelo Okparanta

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“We arrived at the resort in the afternoon when the sun was rising above the army of palm trees, lined and fanning in the breeze like the windmills in the brightening orange and blue.” This is the second novel by Chinelo Okparanta and I wanted to read it after I read an article she wrote describing her process in deciding on the subject of the book. The cover and the title don’t offer much in terms of insight into the book itself, although I wonder […]

Charming start to CBR15

Snowdrift and Other Stories by Georgette Heyer

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I found this collection thanks to one of the many articles that pop up in my social media recommending various types of book to me. I can’t remember what the list was (I think it was some sort of recommendations from the New York Public Library), but given last month’s arrival of snowstorm Elliot plus the overwhelming amount of holiday stuff I had to do, a collection of short stories set in the Regency period seemed like a fun diversion. And it absolutely was! If […]



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