Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Refreshingly Cool

To Build A Fire by Christophe Chaboute

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I settled in to read this quick graphic novel on a warm autumn evening. Sitting in my Muskoka chair in the backyard, sun streaming down on me, I soon felt the cold and frost of Jack London’s classic tale brought to visceral life by the pen of Christophe Chaboute. You’d be tempted to think this is a black and white comic right until the first fire is lit, which is when we finally see flashes of red, orange and yellow, but a closer look will […]

You ought to care when women look at you that way.

Martin Eden by Jack London

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Martin Eden is I think the longest novel Jack London wrote, and it’s the only one of his that is not an adventure tale. Plenty of the other of his writing has struck me as autobiographical, but this feels very much so. As another reviewer points out Martin Eden = M.E. = Me? Anyway, Martin Eden is a rough returned seaman who stumbles upon the daughter of a just outside the edge of upper crust educator after reading some poetry by Charles Swinburne. He has […]

Two Dystopia, South America, a dog, and the South walk across a bridge

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Brave New World – 4/5 Stars Another book I read in high school and college, but hadn’t re-read for 15 or so years. I was thinking about using this for a unit on dystopian literature in my English 12 Special Ed classes, but for a few reasons and a few conversations I don’t really want to have with students, I don’t think I will after all. For one, the sexuality in the book is a lot more forward than I originally remembered, and includes some […]

Jack London, you are one screwed up SOB. Also, Cannonball.

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First of all, a confession. I was, like, one of a teeny handful of girls my age who didn’t care for horses. Everyone was all about Black Beauty and the Black Stallion, and tons of other horseback-riding paperbacks, and I was all, “Eh. I’ll take dolphins” (Misty of Chincoteague was not half bad, but I liked the story, not the horses). Ergo, I thought Black Beauty was a horribly depressing book, and no amount of horse porn could redeem that book for me. I realize […]



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