Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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A Wonderful Western

Whiskey When We're Dry by John Larison

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Are you in the mood for a Western with a lady protagonist? Are you a horse girl at heart? Do you love the sweeping vistas of Old Hollywood Westerns but wish there was a little more exploration of patriarchy? Do you love a fully realized girl character using her grit to get things done? Did you enjoy the movie Slow West? Whiskey When We’re Dry is the book for you.  The story is told by Jessilyn Harney, who starts out with her brother and dad, […]

Horsing Around

Tom's Crossing by Mark Z. Danielewski

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To address the elephant in the room right off the bat, this is a 1200-page novel that is certainly not for everyone. Set in 1982 in the fictional Orvop, Utah (the town name anagrams to Provo), the plot is rather simple for a novel of that length. Two boys who both love horses hatch a plan to save two neglected animals from being slaughtered by the richest man in town. One of the boys, Tom Gatestone, is the son of one of the town’s leading […]

Jack, in his dark camps, saw Ennis as a night fire, a red spark on the huge black mass of mountain.

Brokeback Mountain by E. Annie Proulx

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Going up, the day was fine but the trail deep-drifted and slopping wet at the margins. They left it to wind through a slashy cut, leading the horses through brittle branchwood, Jack, the same eagle feather in his old hat, lifting his head in the heated noon to take the air scented with resinous lodgepole, the dry needle duff and hot rock, bitter juniper crushed beneath the horses’ hooves. Ennis, weather-eyed, looked west for the heated cumulus that might come up on such a day […]

This is a book that I read.

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

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I remember watching Lonesome Dove with my grandparents as a child, although I remember absolutely nothing about the plot (I was probably not actually watching, but reading something while it was on in the background). What I remember most is how much my grandparents liked it. A couple years ago I decided maybe I’d try to read the book. I stopped and started at least 3 times, struggling to have any interest in the lives of a couple retired Texas Rangers. It wasn’t until this year, when […]

Mob Justice in a Western Town

The Ox Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark

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Bingo: “O” The true law is something in itself; it is the spirit of the moral nature of man; it is an existence apart, like God, and as worthy of worship as God. If we can touch God at all, where do we touch him save in the conscience? And what is the conscience of any man save his little fragment of the conscience of all men in all time?” Walter Van Tilburg Clark’s The Ox Bow incident is an observation on justice, mob psychology, […]

Not Exactly Mexican Gothic, But Close Enough

The Bullet Swallower by Elizabeth Gonzalez James

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cbr17bingo Border Now this was an interesting one.  Mexican Gothic is my jam, and I thought that this would be along that vein, but it turned out to be definitely its own thing – an intriguing cross between fictionalized family lore and magical realism.  And when I looked up the translation of Part Two – El Tragabalas, I discover that it is the book’s title in Spanish, but it is also the title of a fairly well known Mexican movie from the mid-60s, and the […]



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