Cannonball Read 11

Sticking it to Cancer One Book at a Time

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“We all live our lives carrying secrets we cannot disclose.”

Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami

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It’s nice to be back at CBR! Last year I went on a reading rampage, tearing through about 90 books (though I didn’t review all of them). This year, I’m taking a more focused approach. I’m intentionally reading more international and female authors in order to expand diversity of thought and experience, and I’m also tackling longer books. I expect to read fewer books, although I still expect a rich year full of growth, thanks to reading and to y’all.  My first book up this year is Haruki Murakami’s newest novel, Killing Commendatore. This is my fifth or sixth Murakami work, […]

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Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

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1/13/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:1 |

Perhaps nothing is certain in this world, but at least we can believe in something.

Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami

Elevation by Stephen King

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Killing Commendatore (4 stars) There were parts of this book that brought me back to my favorite parts of 1Q84, but this book doesn’t equal that one in terms of quality, spirit, or impact. Which doesn’t make this a bad book – by any measure – but I don’t think it’s amongst Murakami’s greatest works. The protagonist of this book is unnamed. He’s an artist who’s fallen into portrait painting to make a living. His wife abruptly tells him that she wants a divorce, and he takes a spontaneous trip around the country before finally settling in the house of […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

Share the post "Perhaps nothing is certain in this world, but at least we can believe in something."

1/4/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:2 |

Sometimes, rarely, you get precisely what you want in life. This is one of those times.

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

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For reasons I can’t fully explain, this book has always held talismanic powers for me. I’ve walked passed it numerous times in the book store, always intending to read it, but never buying it. Until, one day, I did. But then it sat on my shelf unread, collecting dust, and taking up space in a room infrequently visited but never entirely free of my interest. I went on to read other Murakami books, and loved many of them. But Norwegian Wood has been a consistently lit, though dim, beacon in my literary aspirations. I don’t know what I thought it […]

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12/28/2018 's CBR10 Review No:45 |

“Happiness? He wasn’t even sure what that meant.”

Men Without Women: Stories by Haruki Murakami

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Sometimes a year feels fast, and sometimes a year feels slow. Sometimes a year feels like both! That’s been my year with Murakami. It feels like he’s always been a favorite author of mine, but when I look back, I hadn’t read a word of his until early this year. Now I average a Murakami book every couple of months.  This particular book is different than the previous works I’ve read simply because it’s not a novel. It’s a collection of seven stories about, you guessed it, men without women. Or, maybe, men with too many women. Or too many […]

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11/23/2018 's CBR10 Review No:66 |

She said no more about painting. She might have lost interest.

Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami

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Like all or most Haruki Murakami books, this is a strange novel. It has his characters’ weird obsessions with food, sex, breast size, and a slightly off-balance orientation to the world. And like all his novels, or most of his novels, it has simple language describing interesting or complex ideas, and a struggle to make dialogue seem to represent real people and their conversations. (This exact idea will be the opposite in a future review of Marilynne Robinson’s Home, coming soon). This is a relatively rich novel. It’s complex and most of it works. Our protagonist is a portrait artist […]

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10/25/2018 's CBR10 Review No:372 |

Show Me the Essence of Being Lonely

Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami

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Haruki Murakami’s Men without Women is a series of seven short stories, each written in rather different ways, but all focused on similar stories. All talk about men and their relationship with women. The title is a bit of a misnomer in that way in that there is a female character that is featured in each of the stories. But each male character, in some way or another, is or has been without some ‘woman’ in his life. One thing that stood out to me in these short stories is the realism of the characters. Even though the characters are not […]

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9/10/2018 's CBR10 Review No:13 |

If you can’t understand it without an explanation, you can’t understand it with an explanation

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

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CBR10Bingo – White Whale White Whale! I listened to the first disk of this walking around a new town I moved to about 6 years ago and I remember this event so well that the first two or three chapters of this book were incredibly familiar to me. I stopped listening because at 38 disks ripped off of a library copy of the audiobook, there was bound to be a few errors and there were. So this time, I went ahead and just read the book. It’s probably the fastest 1200 (ish) pages I’ve ever read. Murakami’s style is relatively […]

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8/12/2018 's CBR10 Review No:298 |

“In most cases learning something essential in life requires physical pain.”

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

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Since it’s my Year of Murakami, I’m reading both the man’s fiction and his non-fiction. A decade or so ago, Murakami wrote a book about running. Unbeknownst to me, when not listening to jazz records or drinking whisky or thinking about women just out of reach, the author runs marathons. In fact, he runs one a year or so, and also likes triathlons. This book isn’t really a how-to or a straight memoir so much as a man recording his wandering thoughts. For a fan like me, it’s perfect. As “The Plain Dealer” quote on the cover says, the book […]

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7/23/2018 's CBR10 Review No:49 |


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