Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


“That’s the problem with living in New York. You’ve got no New York to run away to.”

Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

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In five-ish words: sophisticated, entertaining, New York, haunted I know a lot of people who say that Towles’ “Gentleman in Moscow” is their favorite book. I haven’t read it yet and have it on my TBR, somewhere middling in the middle. But then a co-host on my podcast recommended “Rules of Civility” for her “must read book” so this one rocketed straight to the top. I felt compelled to pick it up and I’m so glad I did! His writing is so clever and he […]

Nowhere had she encountered as many puppeteers as in Hollywood

Table for Two by Amor Towles

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CBR16 BINGO: Golden, because the novella Eve in Hollywood takes place during the Golden Age of Hollywood BINGO: Part 1, Part 2, Dreams, Golden, Scandal I was so taken with A Gentleman in Moscow that the gathering up and devouring of more of Amor Towles’s works became inevitable. While not quite reaching the same level of charm as the aforementioned tale of a Russian aristocrat, Table for Two is a solid collection of short narratives that mingle humor, tragedy, and resilience. Table for Two feels like […]

Choosing to create a full life despite being imprisoned by circumstances

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

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A Gentleman in Moscow was my book club’s pick for February, otherwise I likely would never have picked it up.  Amongst our tiny group one person noped out, one person was struggling 100 pages in (unknown if they finished it), but I found myself curious and kept going.  While the writing could ramble, sometimes giving asides that have no pertinence to the story, I found myself drawn into the tiny world of Count Alexander Rostov sentenced to live the rest of his life at the Metropol […]

Books that come out of nowhere to become favorites

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

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 As a reader, I find few things more satisfying than stumbling upon a novel expecting nothing but a pleasant diversion and instead falling completely in love with it. My husband found A Gentleman in Moscow in a Little Free Library and took it home because the description and the cover appealed to him. (I probably wouldn’t have picked it up, though it does have a nice cover.) He described the story as “charming” and recommended I try it. We were both thrilled that I was […]

Shorts

The Didomenico Fragment by Amor Towles

The Gentlemen from Peru by Andre Aciman

On Blueberry Hill by Sebastian Berry

Good Enemy by Yilong Liu

The Snowman by R.L. Stine

The Cat Who Saved Books by Sōsuke Natsukawa

Dusk and Other Stories by James Salter

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The Didomenico Fragment This story by Amor Towles takes place all in New York City, with Brooklyn being posed almost as a foreign country. The narrator is an aging art critic and scholar who was recently in possession of a small fragment of a Renaissance masterpiece. He’s approached by an art dealer who asks him about selling the fragment, but he laments that he sold it years ago. This leads to an idea. Early in the story he talks about how being retired, even comfortably, […]

A brief history of the Soviet Union and an homage to Casablanca

A Gentleman in Moscow: A Novel by Amor Towles

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There’s a lot to love about this novel: the writing, the characters, the author’s knowledge of Russian history and literature. The premise behind the novel may seem a bit fantastical, but somehow Amor Towles makes me believe it and want it to be true. In 1922, fictional Count Alexander Rostov was brought before a Revolutionary court and found guilty of being an enemy of the people. Given his class, he might have been executed, but in 1913 Rostov had written poetry sympathetic to revolutionary ideals, […]



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