Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

there’s no HEA in this m/m romance

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

by Leave a Comment

CBR Bingo: Wheel, mainly for the cyclic nature of David’s relationship with Giovanni (and Hella) post- the idyllic room bit, where he goes around and around about what he wants A short, bittersweet plot about David, an Américain in Paris in the late 50s/early 60s (I think) who is nominally engaged to a modern lady who is currently in Spain trying to figure out if she loves David enough to get married. They’re very open minded, you see, until Hella realizes all she wants is […]

I was in a terrible confusion. Sometimes I thought, but this is your life. Stop fighting it.

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

by Leave a Comment

And I realized that such childishness was fantastic at my age and the happiness out of which it sprang yet more so; for that moment I really loved Giovanni, who had never seemed more beautiful than he was that afternoon. And, watching his face, I realized that it meant much to me that I could make his face so bright. I saw that I might be willing to give a great deal not to lose that power. And I felt myself flow toward him, as […]

Now A Major Motion Picture And Sadly A Common Story on The News

If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin

by Leave a Comment

  It has been over 50 years since James Baldwin penned this powerful fiction, yet very little seems to have changed. If Beale Street Could Talk straddles genres: it is a tender love story between Tish and Fonny, a slice-of-life drama of the 1970s New York Black experience, and a tense courtroom procedural. While some cultural references have aged, the catalyst—Fonny’s false arrest by a cop who takes personal offense at his existence—remains as common today as it was then. Baldwin’s prose lifts these characters […]

Sadly Still Relevant

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

by 1 Comment

James Baldwin writes so beautifully and so incisively. He also writes quite densely, at least in this work of nonfiction (compared to the two novels I’ve read by him). His writing style made it a little hard to fully absorb and retain what he was saying. However, I was certainly able to take away how little has changed in the 60+ years  since Baldwin published this. For example, he writes about how police officers’ treatment of Black individuals affected him: “. . . all police […]

A punch in the gut, but make it literary

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

by 3 Comments

I expected this book to be about sexuality and Paris, in the way perhaps that A Moveable Feast is, or any of the other million Paris-based love stories. Honestly, I should have known better.  It is kind of about sexuality!  But it’s also about so many other things that by the end of the book I had stopped thinking about it as a love story at all. On the second page or so, we already know that our protagonist, David, is in Paris, but about […]

Can I Just Say “Wow!” and Leave It at That?

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

by Leave a Comment

What an incredible book. I knew from reading If Beale Street Could Talk that James Baldwin was a good writer, but it is rare for me to appreciate a book on just a literary level. The prose, the symbolism, the way it’s so clear what the narrator is experiencing even though he himself is hiding from his feelings—it was phenomenal. Written in the 1950s and set in Paris, the novel follows narrator David through his relationship with Giovanni and the aftermath of its ending. We know from […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo