Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

A Weird Book and Murakami. So, Two Weird Books, I Guess

The Employees by Olga Ravn

The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami

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CBR18 BINGO: Craft for The Employees (unconventional/fragmented/experimental approach) and Summer for The City and Its Uncertain Walls The Employees by Olga Ravn So, I read this. Uh . . . And then I did some of this: It’s hard to know what to make of this. It’s confusing, although I do think I understood the general gist of it. To be honest, though, for a while I only knew what was happening because the book blurb tells you, and it felt like the book blurb made some of the connections […]

Appreciating an attractive middle-aged woman is one of the great luxuries in life.

Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami

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She was truly a beautiful girl. I could feel a small polished stone sinking through the darkest waters of my heart. All those deep convoluted channels and passageways, and yet she managed to toss her pebble right down to the bottom of it all. ― Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance Sometimes when I’m with you. I remember the things I lost when I was your age. Like I remember the sound of the rain and the smell of the wind. And it’s really a gift, […]

No matter how long you stand there examining yourself naked before a mirror, you’ll never see reflected what’s inside.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami

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To be able to grasp something of value, sometimes you have to perform seemingly inefficient acts. But even activities that appear fruitless don’t necessarily end up so. ― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running CBR17 Bingo: Culture This book discusses a runner’s mentality as well as running culture. As an avid reader of Haruki Murakami, I’ve been meaning to check this book off of my list for going on ten years. I wondered though if his nonfiction could hold up […]

What I talk about when I talk about “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running”

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami

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I have been recommended books by Haruki Murakami for a while now. Norwegian Wood and IQ84 are on my to read list, but I admit I had no particular interest in getting a copy of “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running”, despite being an avid runner for over a decade now. Running started as a chore for me. Every day after work I would go down to the gym and jog on the treadmill for an hour. I worked up my speed […]

“We’re alive!”

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

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I love the idea of retrocausality – the idea that actions in the future influence outcomes in the past. Or, rather, I’m interested in the idea of ripples across time. Like this – something in the future hits the water, and I feel the ripples now, and I felt it when I was 21, and 13, and 7. In other words, some major events impact us throughout our experience of time in ways we don’t understand, both forward and backward. And our ripples mingle with […]

Why I Run

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami

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Best for: Runners looking for a meditation on running. In a nutshell: Author Murakami, better known by most for his novels, shares how running impacts his life. Worth quoting: “People sometimes sneer at those who run every day, claiming they’ll go to any length to live longer. But I don’t think that’s the reason most people run. Most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest.” “I’m often asked what I think about as […]



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