Cannonball Read 14

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Grab Bag

Assassins of Thasalon by Lois McMaster Bujold

Knot of Shadows by Lois McMaster Bujold

Death in Venice by Thomas Mann

Basic Training by Kurt Vonnegut

The Ipcress File by Len Deighton

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

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Assassins of Thasalon – 3/5 Stars I fear I am starting to get some Penric-fatigue, and I hope it’s not Bujold fatigue as well. I have to say that the previous two entries in the series did little for me, and this one was more interesting, but won’t stay with me much longer. It’s also possible that’s where I’ve been all along with Penric, who is part of the World of the Five Gods, the world that Bujold has created that I care the least […]

Grab Bag

Madame Maigret's Friend by Georges Simenon

The Undiscovered Self by Carl Jung

The Hedgehog and the Fox by Isaiah Berlin

The Art of Controversy by Arthur Schopenhauer

The Moviegoer by Walker Percy

Inspector Cadaver by Georges Simenon

Mrs Bridge by Evan Connell

The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson

Hocus Pocus by Kurt Vonnegut

The Wayward Bus by John Steinbeck

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Madame Maigret’s Friend – 4/5 Stars I liked this Maigret more than a lot of others I’ve read. Our mystery involves someone being arrested with a bloody coat hanging in his closet and the burnt remains of a body in his furnace. HIs lawyer maintains that he’s completely innocent of any wrongdoing (including questioning whether or not it’s actually known for sure that wrongdoing has occurred) because of the failure to link physical evidence to the crime. This becomes a bit of a musing on […]

Jailbird

Jailbird by Kurt Vonnegut

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Another Vonnegut book I am rereading, this one from 1979 and more or less starting off his 80s and 90s run. It’s another book that makes me laugh now to reread and wonder what in the world I must have thought was going on when I read it when I was 15. Anyway, this book also speaks to the idea that if something meaningful happened in the United States during the 20th century, there’s a good chance it’s showed up as a kind of subplot […]

“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.'”

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut

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I did not expect to love this book so much, but it really hit me pretty hard. I liked Sirens of Titan by Vonnegut just fine, it was fun, and I really liked Slaughterhouse-Five, but I didn’t connect to it emotionally like I did God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. Near the beginning of the book, there’s a moment when Eliot Rosewater is thinking about Vonnegut’s stand-in writer character, Kilgore Trout, who is Eliot’s favorite author (see quote below, which also applies to sci-fi and fantasy […]

In which I have to repeatedly recall how to spell labyrinth.

Labyrinth by Kate Mosse

Deadeye Dick by Kurt Vonnegut

Woman at Point Zero by Nawal el Saadawi

A Red Death by Walter Mosley

A Touch of Jen by Beth Morgan

The Confusions of Young Master Torless by Robert Musil

The Human Comedy by William Saroyan

Myra Breckinridge by Gore Vidal

The Crystal World by JG Ballard

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Labyrinth – 3/5 stars Don’t be fooled by the weird claim on the cover of this book that it’s similar to The Da Vinci Code. It’s not except that this book came out in a time where people were very much trying to capitalize on the success of that novel. The result was some very bad copycats from a novel I love, for how exceedingly silly and dumb it is. I don’t think this novel is among my favorite but it’s so very different from […]

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 […]



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