Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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“What garlic is to salad, insanity is to art.”-Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Stan and Gus: Art, Ardor, and the Friendship That Built the Gilded Age by Henry Wiencek

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When  I first read about this book in The NY Times Book Review, I knew I had to have it. Having grown up on a steady diet of  hearing about “Ragtime” and “The Girl on the Velvet Swing”, or how about how Clover Adams’s Memorial was on my mother’s must-see list, any book that covered any and all of that was something I needed to read. Thankfully, this did not disappoint. Stan and Gus covers the working (and potentially sexual) relationship of Standford White and […]

Ladies and Gentlemen, the (reading) Weekend…

Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon

Times Square Red, Times Square Blue by Samuel R. Delany

Queer: A Graphic History by Meg John-Barker, Julia Scheele (illustration)

Widespread Panic by James Ellroy

Quarry's Cut by Max Allan Collins

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Read a variety of books close to and over the weekend. Let’s check it out… Bleeding Edge **** This is a 2021 reread and it’s better than I remember. The ending disappoints but it’s still an entertaining, prescient novel. Pynchon warned us about Too Online culture and yet, here we are.   Times Square Red, Times Square Blue **** I don’t know what I expected but it wasn’t this. And I liked it! Mostly. This is like a tale of two books. It’s two essays […]

My Sister Hated It

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My sister hated The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.  I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it either.  I think I wanted more, or, maybe, I just wanted it to be better. It glosses over a lot of Evelyn’s relationships and especially with the relationship that Evelyn claimed was the most important. I also had the same problem with it that I had with All the Stars in the Heavens in that, reading this book from the mindset of someone not living in those […]

Treason and Syphilis During the 7-Years War

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This is Gabaldon’s first book in a new trilogy following her highly successful Outlander series. The “Lord John” series is based on the relatively minor character from the Outlander books Lord John Grey, who is a young and fiercely patriotic military officer and second son of a wealthy and prestigious family. Lord John is also a secret homosexual, a practice which was seen as akin to treason in these tumultuous days of the Seven Years War between England and France, and which causes him no […]

Wars, treason and homosexuality in 18th century England

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An offshoot of the original Outlander series, the Lord John novels deal with Lord John Grey, a British nobleman, a soldier and a patriot in the time of the Seven Years War in 18th century Europe. He is also a secret homosexual, at a time when coming out would not only destroy his career, his reputation and that of his family, but would very likely lead to his exile, jailing, or possibly even execution. Despite the fact that homosexuality is pervasive during these times, and […]

A Novelist’s Profound Discourse on Human Suffering

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This was my first foray into the writing of Ruth Rendell, who now apparently publishes under the pseudonym of Barbara Vine, and I was affected to the core by what some reviewers call her finest work. She takes the story of an outwardly successful family—a popular British author, his two beloved daughters, his caring wife—and forges a mystery so infused with sadness and psychological trauma that it can leave no reader unscathed. Gerald Candless is an imposing figure of a man—deep-voiced and towering, with leonine […]



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