Cannonball Read 11

Sticking it to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Nice guy ™ can’t get laid. Now featuring the entire history of the Dominican Republic.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz

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What a great title for a book. What a shame that the book does not deal in either brevity or anything that resembles an account of Oscar’s life. This book was an absolute slog to get through. From the overt sexualization of women to the complete lack of plot there was nothing to be gained and certainly no connection to be made with any character. “The next day at breakfast he asked his mother: Am I ugly? She sighed. Well, hijo, you certainly don’t take after me. Dominican parents! You got to love them!” The book starts off promising, explaining […]

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10/10/2018 's CBR10 Review No:36 |

Islandborn

Islandborn by Junot Diaz

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Lola and her classmates are mostly from “someplace else” but now call here home. A school project to draw what you remember best about that first place has Lola unsure of herself (after all, she was just a baby when she left and has no memories from then). Yet, she quickly figures out how to use the resources around her: her family, friends, neighbors and even the memory the island has of her, to capture her heritage. Adults will see current and historical events and experience what being a modern immigrant is all about. Everyone will delight in the colorful […]

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3/27/2018 's CBR10 Review No:52 |

Immigrants! We get the job done?

Drown by Junot Diaz

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Getting through Drown, a collection of short stories by Junot Diaz, took me close to a month. This delay was due to my very bad, no-good month of January, which included some emotional fall-out after the inauguration and the first two weeks of this administration. I can thus say that the stories in the book can be divided like so: Read pre-Trump vs. read post-Trump. Obviously this wasn’t Diaz’s intent – after all, it was published in 1996 – but personally, for me, the short stories in the beginning of the collection were more tied to heartbreak and youthful malice, while […]

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2/8/2017 's CBR9 Review No:3 |

This is how you lose me…(yes, I realize it’s been said before).

This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Díaz

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I read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao sometime earlier this CBR, and I was not…exactly…wildly enthusiastic over it. I felt that Díaz was a really talented storyteller, but his characters were unsympathetic and deeply, deeply maddening. But I decided that maybe Díaz’s writing would overcome the kinds of characters he developed in his novel. I am disappointed to report that his collection of short stories suffers from the same kinds of problems as his novel. This Is How You Lose Her is again narrated by Yunior. First. Mistake. Yunior is a bad man. He cheats on his girlfriends, […]

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7/14/2015 's CBR7 Review No:131 |

A tale of Dominican oppression, of nerd self-hate, and of my ambivalence.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

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I’ve heard a LOT about Junot Diaz and his works. Out of curiosity, I decided to read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. And I am super ambivalent about what I just read. Especially since a lot of parts reminded me of Julia Alvarez’s How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents–but with an extra layer of self-loathing. The novel is several stories surrounding the titular character, Oscar. He is a Dominican-American young man who is overweight and geeky, with interests in writing, science fiction, fantasy, and role-playing games. A stereotypical nerd. He is also a virgin and has this […]

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5/28/2015 's CBR7 Review No:89 |

By Lying, Cheating, and Cheating, Yes, “This Is How You Lose Her”

This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz

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Junot Diaz’s This Is How You Lose Her (2012) is an eight story collection of machismo, misogynistic narratives centered around Yunior, a seemingly compulsive cheater who is forced to face the consequences of his actions. Never having read Diaz before, I had no idea what to expect, and after reading epigraph by Sandra Cisneros, I used my knowledge her structure and style from The House on Mango Street (1984) to guide me. What ensued was a rather confusing read. Unlike some who found Diaz’s use of Spanglish to be the cause of their confusion, the shifting perspective and time in each chapter are what did […]

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10/4/2014 's CBR6 Review No:14 |

A guide to love from a chronic cheater

This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz

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This Is How You Lose Her is a series of short stories that deal mostly with men’s infidelity in relationships, with the exception of one of the stories being from a women’s point of view. Readers of Diaz’s first book, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, will recognize Yunior, who appears repeatedly in the stories in relationships with different women. A running theme throughout these stories is how men don’t often see women as a real person. Like Yunior’s dog brother, Rafa, who sees and discards women with no concern for their feelings, even as he is dying from […]

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9/29/2014 's CBR6 Review No:8 |

It Really Was All Too Brief…

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

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My book club picked The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz  for our February get together.  This is the reason I love book club, because I would never have picked up this book on my own.  Also, like every other female book club, we drink large amounts of wine.  But we always read the book! The novel is centered around Oscar, a tragic and hopeless lame teenager, during his high school and college years.   Oscar is overweight, socially awkward, and just a bit too into science fiction and role playing games than the average teenager in […]

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2/24/2014 's CBR6 Review No:7 |


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