Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“It is easy, when you are young, to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough, it is your God-given right to have it.”

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

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After graduating from college, Chris McCandless vanished from his former life and took to the road. The next that his family heard about him was several years later, when he was discovered to have starved to death in the remote Alaskan wilderness. I love Krakauer’s writing, astute and lyrical, and the way he tells this story makes me feel like I’m peering into the abyss of mortality he describes encountering on his ascent of Devils Thumb. Into Thin Air is one of my favorite books […]

A Study in Scarlet

Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer

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I grew up, and still live, in a state with a significant population of Mormons. There are particular towns where many of the families share the same few names and it is not uncommon to see wedding announcements with the bride and groom having the same last name. In the way of small towns everywhere, you just sort of know the things you know about some people and some places. I went out with a couple of wrestlers while I was in high school and […]

Utah v. Lafferty

Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer

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Not long after, Ron handed Dan a piece of paper through the bars. Written on it was a revelation that Ron said he’d just received, in which God commanded Dan to let Ron kill him. After praying for guidance, Dan says, “I felt I should submit to what it said, and we discussed how it might be done.” In 1984, two men, fervent Mormon fundamentalists, murdered their sister-in-law and niece and claimed they had been commanded to do so by God. Krakauer is one of […]

The room was small and shabby.

The Man Who Went Up in Smoke by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo

The Fog by James Herbert

The Influence by Ramsay Campbell

Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

The Dark Country by Dennis Etchison

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

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The Man Who Went up in Smoke – 4/5 Stars This is the second of the Martin Beck books, and I’ve read about half of them now. This follows up Roseanna, the first of the books, and a strong entry into the series. I think this book is also quite strong, and like the other books in the series seems to be laying the groundwork for a lot of the ways these books have been so influential over the years. In this book, we follow […]

Ascending to Hell

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

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In 1996, Outside magazine sent journalist and mountain climber Jon Krakauer to chronicle a typical journey to the summit of Earth’s highest peak, Mount Everest. Instead, he played witness to one of the deadliest excursions to ever befall the mountain. Numerous climbers died or disappeared into the white of a brutal storm, and those who survived suffered untold psychological and spiritual damage long after the journey. Murphy’s Law came down mercilessly on this group, even before the disastrous final day. Into Thin Air reads like […]

A battleship… Uh oh, sharks.

Gyo by Junji Ito

Uzumaki by Junji Ito

The Test by Sylvain Neuvel

The Hero by Lee Child

Classic Krakauer by Jon Krakauer

Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore

Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey

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Like a lot of you, I filled up on library books for the closures and hunkering down. My library announced that not only are they closing, that fines are waived, and nothing is due until the end of March, that also their dropboxes are closed. Who knows what that means, but for me it likely means I will read all the books I got, instead of sorting through and figuring it out one by one. Anyway, here’s my first chunk of reviews from all of […]



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