Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Spring Cleaning

The Sick Bag Song by Nick Cave

The Lemming Condition by Alan Arkin

Trump and Populism by Michael Kazin

How Do We Look by Mary Beard

Family Life by Russel Banks

Last Train from Perdition by Robert McCammon

The Rule of St Benedict by St Benedict

Theodore Roosevelt by Louis Auchincloss

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The Sick Bag Song by Nick Cave “A young boy climbs a riverbank.” This tour memoir and more or less book of poetry opens up with the image above of a young boy climbing up a riverbank and feeling like he has a brush with a train passing close by. I was girding myself for the possibility that I had decided to read a book that Nick Cave write after the death of his son in a not impossibly similar situation. That would happen a […]

Louis Auchincloss (2)

The Rector of Justin by Louis Auchincloss

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This is a decidedly tender novel that I wasn’t exactly expecting to be as good as it is. For one thing, I just read some Louis Auchincloss nonfiction, and while his thinking is very strong in those essays, the writing itself felt too pedestrian or pragmatic. But here, the language is very strong, lively, and breathed with spirit. Perhaps it’s the change in form or just the 25 years in between.  The novel is also unexpected in its form. We meet a young teacher on […]

Louis Auchincloss (1)

The Style's the Man by Louis Auchincloss

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The full title of this book is “The Style’s the Man: Reflections on Proust, Fitzgerald, Wharton, Vidal, and Others” and there’s lots of others. In fact, the essays here about William Gaddis, Ivy Compton-Burnett, and the failures of Henry James’s theater career are the more interesting of the essays here, because of the more obscurity of the subjects. This is a small collection of literary essays by the (mostly) novelist and lawyer Louis Auchincloss. It’s exactly the kind of book I really enjoy about literature, […]



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