Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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History and its Bastards. Greedy, Greedy Bastards.

King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. by Adam Hochschild

The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company by William Dalrymple

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I think I am going to spend my Memorial Day weekend writing about history. And it’s not going to be about the nice bits of history, either. I have been holding off on a number of these reviews because sometimes the subject matter was just a little too depressing. At best, we are dealing with a conga line of arseholes. At best. And at worst? Well, we’re dealing with some pretty bad ‘at worsts’ here…  The first book is Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost: A […]

He leaned forward, his breath the smell of whiskey drunk straight from the bottle.

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

Congo by Michael Crichton

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This is a reread for both of these books, but it’s also possible I never read Congo — I did see the movie on HBO while babysitting in like 1997 and it’s truly awful. The book is also, not great, but it is a lot better than the movie. Fight Club, of course, I read right after watching the movie. Fight Club – 4/5 Stars This book mostly still holds up. Like the movie, of course, the satire (WHICH IS NOT SUBTLE ACTUALLY) does not […]

No man here lives a charmed life.

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Okay, I’m probably operating on far too little sleep to write a coherent review, but here goes. The prose here is a luminous dream, casting it’s shadows upon the mind and lulling the reader into a warm and tranquil languidity. Coming so fast on the heels of the tenaciously awkward writing of Stephanie Meyer, the fluidity exhibited by Conrad is both refreshing in its rarity and a disheartening reminder that I can never be the writer I often dream that I am. This story has […]



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