Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Dying Grass

The Dying Grass by William Vollmann

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I have no real idea what to say about a book like this. It’s an experience, that’s for sure. If you’ve read any of the other Seven Dreams books by William Vollmann you can probably guess some of the things that go in this one. Usually there’s a storyteller figure, here called William the Blind, who acts as a kind of guide through the various stories. Here that means someone who can be in the future of the narrative, looking at the American Northwest and […]

“How to quantify the quality of being alive?”

The Wonder by Emma Donoghue

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CBR Bingo square: Bodies. I read this one closer to the start of my summer of Irish fiction, in an independent study with a student who needed just a couple more credits to graduate. I wanted something pretty contemporary to close out on, so I gave her a choice between Donoghue’s The Pull of the Stars, which I’d already read, and The Wonder, which I had not. She picked The Wonder.  Donoghue has explained that this novel was inspired by the Victorian phenomenon of “fasting girls,” in which […]

These

Look Back in Anger by John Osborne

War of the Worlds by Orson Welles

Sleuth by Anthony Shaffer

Dr Faustus by Christopher Marlowe

Gaslight/Angel Street by Patrick Hamilton

Rope by Patrick Hamilton

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Look Back in Anger – 3/5 I took a class in grad school called “Post-War British Masculinity” and lest you think it was just a code-word for “Angry Young Men” we also read some tremendously good books like the Collected Philip Larkin, Brideshead Revisited, and The Jewel in the Crown. This was also one of the books we read, though we mainly talked about the movie, since it starred a very histrionic Richard Burton in full “RAGE, RAGE AGAINST THE DYING OF THE LIGHT” kind […]

Alan Bennett

The History Boys by Alan Bennett

Single Spies by Alan Bennett

Forty Years On by Alan Bennett

The Madness of George III by Alan Bennett

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If you haven’t read much Alan Bennett, I really recommend him. He’s devilish in the best of ways, and his short novella An Uncommon Reader, is truly wonderful. History Boys – 5/5 This is the famous, Tony-awarding winning, and filmed play by Alan Bennett. In the play, we begin in the 1980s or so with a group of public school boys being instructed in literature, especially poetry in preparation for college entrance exams. The instruction method is chaotic, and seems to be based in the […]

Fragile Things A Solid Collection of Stories from Gaiman

Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman

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So, and interesting story on why I re-read this collection. Being the Gaiman nerd I am, I purchased a 1st edition immediately when it came out and then had Neil sign it for my son who was very young at the time. That son is going to college in a few weeks and I decided to read the collection again before he leaves as a reminder of days gone by. My impression of the work has not changed, it is a good short story collection […]

The 200 pages left to read I’m guessing is more of the warped sameness

Human Remains: The Complete Series by Peter Milligan

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EDIT: I wrote the below yesterday, since then I started Chapter Two and I think I am now hooked. I’ve gotten to the point where I can include there are several trigger warnings including, but not limited to: Pandemic like situations, violence, sexual assault, sexuality, extreme blood/violence, religious content.  And a three for potential and how much I like/dislike the first chapter and half.   There is something perversely beautiful about the first chapter of Human Remains: The Complete Series. Especially towards the end when […]



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