Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

This book tied everything together perfectly

Comanche Moon by Larry McMurtry

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I started this book soon after finishing Dead Man’s Walk back in June. I stalled about 100 pages in, and kind of stopped reading.  I didn’t even remember The Vegetarian by Han Kang until my wife asked me about it after hearing that she was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. Han Kang, that is, not my wife (though, I would totally award my wife a Nobel Prize). Anyway. I talked a co-worker of mine into reading Lonesome Dove a few months ago, and he’s […]

I Spied Some Old Cowboys

Streets of Laredo by Larry McMurtry

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Spoiler Warning: This book is a sequel, and I don’t think I can review it without spoiling Lonesome Dove. Almost two decades have passed since the disastrous cattle drive described in Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove, and those who survived are spread far and wide across the West. Woodrow Call is getting quite old and missing his friend and partner Augustus McCrae, but he’s still revered enough as a lawman to be hired by the railroad to capture or kill a wild man robbing trains and […]

A selection of books from the last several months

Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan

Hell of a Book by Jason Mott

Dead Man's Walk by Larry McMurtry

Hemlock Island by Kelley Armstrong

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I’ve been pretty terrible this year. I haven’t been reading very much, and what little reading I have done hasn’t inspired much writing. So I’m just going to throw these reviews into a box, just to remind myself that I like doing this. Y: The Last Man (Vol. 1) (3 stars) Set in a post-apocalyptic America where all mammals with a Y-chromosome (including sperm and embryos) suddenly and simultaneously die – except for Yorick Brown and his pet monkey, Ampersand. What’s left is a world […]

Still not caught up on my reviews, but I’m working on it.

Streets of Laredo by Larry McMurtry

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

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I’m doing terribly at keeping up with my reviews this year, so I’m going to do a review dump. Streets of Laredo by Larry McMurtry (4.5/5) (Spoilers abound.) Lonesome Dove was a revelatory experience for me. It was that rare experience that I knew to appreciate while I was reading it. Rather than devouring the book and then mourning it’s end, I was able to savor the novel and drag it out a little bit. I was still a little skeptical about reading the follow-up, […]

An elegiac paean that didn’t convey what it’s author wanted

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

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In 1981, Bruce Springsteen was in talks with Paul Schrader to star in a musical that would, six years later, become Light of Day, and starred Michael J. Fox in one of his first non-comedic roles. The film was originally titled Born in the U.S.A., which Springsteen would use to title a song he’d been working on about a Vietnam veteran. After going through several home demo permutations, it would eventually be the center-point for his 1984 multi-platinum album of the same name, and helped […]

Et al

To Hold up the Sky by Cixin Liu

The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust

Anything for Billy by Larry McMurtry

Dance to the Music of Time: The Valley of Bones by Anthony Powell

Dance to the Music of Time: The Soldier's Art by Anthony Powell

Dance to the Music of Time: The Military Philosophers by Anthony Powell

Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

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To Hold up the Sky – 3/5 I really like the Cixin Liu novels I’ve read, and have felt that the short story collections are a mixed bag. The issue tends to be a lack of closing confidence. There’s also some cool premises, and some interesting premises explored in strange ways.  The opening story “The Village Teacher” splits the narrative between a simple country teacher and an intergalactic war, and the way in which these get resolved is really interesting.  Another story takes a huge […]



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