Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Hostages and Opera

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

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I picked up Bel Canto (2001) by Ann Patchett because it was chosen for my book club. And about a week after my book club met, I finally finished reading it. My tardiness in finishing should not reflect on this novel, which I found very interesting and read quickly. The problem was that I started reading the night before my book club met. An unnamed South American country (most likely Peru) is wooing Katsumi Hosokawa, a Japanese business mogul, to invest in their country. They throw a […]

CBR Bingo (7) Dream Vacation

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My husband is Brazilian; he was born in Sao Paulo but moved to Texas when he was a pre-schooler and became a US citizen years before we got married. I’ve always found it ironic that my soul mate was born thousands of miles away from me but the houses we grew up in are walking distance from one another. Despite our long relationship and the extensive family he still has living down there I’ve never been. There are a few reasons for this: it is […]

The question is whether or not you choose to disturb the world around you, or if you choose to let it go on as if you had never arrived

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I picked up this book in my ongoing love affair with fiction about the natural world. I also really enjoyed  Patchett’s “Commonwealth” and I wanted to read more of her stuff.  A little bit “Heart of Darkness” and a little bit “Poisonwood Bible“,  Ann Patchett’s “A State of Wonder” explores maternal love,  the big business of pharmacology and the ethics of interfering with indigenous people.  There’s a lot going on in this book. When a letter arrives bearing the news that Dr. Anders Eckman has […]

We were such a fierce little tribe

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My parents got divorced when I was  9. I was an only child but my father’s second wife had kids from a previous marriage. After their marriage, my father moved to the other side of the country.  For me, that was a big culture shock and I was endlessly fascinated with the mechanics of sibling interactions. I had never had to “call” a seat for a car ride before. It was like I had landed on the moon for a month every summer.  This was  in […]

“She sang as if she was saving the life of every person in the room.”

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Bel Canto opens at the birthday party of Japanese industrial titan Katsumi Hosokawa in the small, unnamed South American country that is trying to woo Mr. Hosokawa into building his next factory in their country. When Mr. Hosokawa declines the invitation, because he has no intentions of bringing his business there, the host country persuades famed opera soprano Roxanne Coss to sing at the party which in turn convinces opera fanatic Mr. Hosokawa to attend. Shortly after Roxanne Coss finishes her set the light goes out […]

It’s a Fine Line Between Transformative and Toxic

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When my book club chose Truth and Beauty, Ann Patchett’s memoir about her friendship with fellow writer, Lucy Grealy, I had mixed feelings.  I read the book when it first came out in 2004 and had read Grealy’s memoir, Autobiography of a Face, a number of years before that.  I remember that I found Patchett’s book interesting but also disturbing but the exact reasons why had faded from my memory.  A few months ago, I thought I might fake my way through the evening by […]



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