Cannonball Read 15

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Grabbag

Point to Point Navigation by Gore Vidal

A Sorrow beyond Dreams by Peter Handke

For Colored Girls... by Ntozake Shange

Madea by Euripides

Anthem by Ayn Rand

Mumbo Jumbo by Ishmael Reed

The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

Beowulf by Trans. Heaney

Beowulf by Trans. Headley

Never Let me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie

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Point to Point Navigation – 4/5 This is a second and shorter memoir by Gore Vidal published a few years before he died. It wasn’t right before his death, but you get the impression that he is saying a last few things at least before he begins to wrap up his writing career. His career began when he was about 19 or so when he began writing what would become his first novel, Williwaw, a WWII short novel about a boat in the North Pacific […]

Thanksgiving Week Glut

The Odyssey by Homer; Emily Wilson

A Good Man in Africa by William Boyd

Scoop by Evelyn Waugh

Nine Princes of Amber by Roger Zelazny

To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip Jose Farmer

Free Lance Pallbearers by Ishmael Reed

Dragons of Highlord Skies by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

Revolutionary Characters by Gordon Wood

Glory by Vladimir Nabokov

Lives of a Cell by Lewis Thomas

South of the Border West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami

Books of Blood by Clive Barker

Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut

Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov

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The Odyssey – 5/5 Stars So my review is specific to the newer Emily Wilson translation, which I find particularly good and readable. She writes a long introduction that serves as a solid guide to the epic, to the writing, the historical context, and other important keys. This is long, but worthwhile, especially if you’re new to the story or it’s been a long time or you’re a little rough in your epic-reading. From there, there’s a very good translator’s note of some length explaining […]

Thanksgiving Short Books

The Beautiful Struggle by Ta-Nahisi Coates

Buck by MK Asante

Yellow-Back Radio Brokedown by Ishmael Reed

Guerilla Warfare by Che Guevara

The Crazy Kill by Chester Himes

The Double Helix by James Watson

Pafko at the Wall by Don Delillo

Williwaw by Gore Vidal

The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By by Georges Simenon

The Mahe Circle by Georges Simenon

The Hand by Georges Simenon

The Engagement by Georges Simenon

Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata

Beauty and Sadness by Yasunari Kawabata

Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata

The Promise by Damon Galgut

Consider This by Chuck Palahniuk

Gerald's Party by Robert Coover

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The Beautiful Struggle – 5/5  Stars I never taught in Baltimore City, but I did teach in Baltimore County, where Ta-Nehisi Coates spends part of high school. (I was two schools over, but the idea was pretty much the same there). So the result is some familiarity here. If I ever met Ta-Nehisi Coates, I think what I would want to tell him is when I was brand new to Baltimore, so when I scheduled my meeting with the MVA (DMV) I went to the […]

Assorted Short Fiction I

Nimona (audiobook) by Noelle Stevenson

The Armies of those I Love by Ken Liu

Fashionably Undead by Meg Cabot

Miscellaneous 0125 by Berri George

Zeta Family by Gretchen Enders

Temporary by Hilary Leichter

The Fool Who Thought too Much by Ishmael Reed

Bedtime Stories for Cynics by Various

Escape from Virtual Island by Jon Lutz

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Nimona – 5/5 Stars I really do love this book a lot. It’s so full of charm and joy and fun. It FEELS whimsical at times, and I generally do like whimsy, but it’s a much more tightly controlled and structured narrative than whimsy would suggest. I have owned three copies of this book and have had three copies get “borrowed” by students and never returned. I feel like everyone knows what the book is, but a quick recap. We are in a far-off magical […]

And here we are once again with tonight’s top stories.

Mother Hubbard by Ishmael Reed

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This collection of Ishmael Reed plays includes plays from about 1970 through 2009. Many of the plays have been updated at various times, or else it would seem weird that a play from 1970 is referencing Bill Gates, 1996, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump. I decided to read this book in part because of the fact that I’ve read several Ishmael Reed novels and nonfiction books at various times and his audaciousness and brazenness, but also complete clarity of thought and refusal to compromise ideas […]

It wasn’t New York that frustrated me but San Francisco.

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Blues City – 3/5 Stars Here’s what I learned from this book: Ishmael Reed really hates Jerry Brown. It’s a special kind of hatred too, one reserved by someone on the far-left for someone not left enough. That’s the secret of the Left, destroy those close to you but not close enough. I don’t think Ishmael Reed is an ideological purist by any means. His politics comes across as too messy and stitched together for that. It’s a kind of untenable utopian thinking that based […]



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