Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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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 […]

I never left Brokeback Mountain

Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx

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I was obsessed with movies in the 2000s. It was that nascent period where people are first discovering themselves. Some use that time productively, some use it to get into trouble. I used it to watch way too many movies. I eagerly awaited the release of Brokeback Mountain. I was a fan of Heath Ledger, but I loved Ang Lee. The Wedding Banquet and Eat Drink Man Woman are two of my favorite movies. I had never read the short story upon which it was […]

Close is no comfort

Close Range by Annie Proulx

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Annie Proulx can write.  I realize this should be apparent since she’s won a Pulitzer for writing, but this was the first work of hers that I read and I was blown away all the same.  Close Range is a short story collection set in Wyoming, with stories that vary in length (40 pages to 2 pages) but not in punch.  She sets her stories in the rural central and eastern part of the state, focusing on working class people- because its Wyoming this means […]

There is no happiness like that of a young couple in a little house they have built themselves in a place of beauty and solitude.

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This is the weakest of the three Wyoming Stories collections that Annie Proulx released. I would have to say a long collection culled from all three would have been the best way to present the total package with a handful from each and a few of the weaker or empty stories completely removed would have worked best for me. In this one, there are a few very good stories, as you would expect from a strong writer. The first story “Family Man” about an older […]

“I wish I knew how to quit you.”

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Well, this was just about the harshest “romance” I’ve ever read. “One thing never changed: the brilliant charge of their infrequent couplings was darkened by the sense of time flying, never enough time, never enough.” I’ve never seen the movie version of Brokeback Mountain, although I’m familiar with the story. I never got around to seeing it before Heath Ledger’s death, and since he passed away, I can’t watch anything of his without feeling slightly weepy (10 Things I Hate About You does it the worst — […]

Charlie Brown Grows Up and Moves to Canada

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This 1993 novel won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize and was turned into a movie. The Shipping News is the story of a man named Quoyle over the course of a few eventful, transformative years of his life. Proulx’s unique writing style combines poetry and humor to create characters who might be from a folk tale or might be your next door neighbor. Hive spangled, gut roaring with gas and cramps, he survived childhood….” Quoyle is a lot like Charlie Brown […]



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