Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“And it wasn’t fair. That was the thing that was at the heart of my reluctance and my resentment. Some people make it out of their stories unscathed, thriving. Some people don’t.”

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

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In one word: Grieving Cannonball Read Bingo: Uncannon I picked this for uncannon because Gyasi is giving new life to a story that we’ve seen many times over from the Eurocentric white perspective. There have been plenty of books about drug addiction (even specifically about Oxycontin and the havoc it is wreaking in America), mental illness, the crossroads of science and religion in academia, and an overachieving character trying to fix her heart by using her head. She is taking very familiar tropes and given […]

Two very different novels from a very English author

The Tenth Man by Graham Greene

Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene

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Graham Greene was a prolific English writer who, in addition to writing over 25 novels, wrote movie treatments and screenplays. Probably his most famous adaptation was for the Orson Welles classic The Third Man, based on Greene’s own novella of the same name. The author conceived of The Tenth Man in the 1940s while working for MGM, but nothing happened with the draft for 40 years. When MGM sold the rights in 1983, the buyer allowed Greene to revise and publish the novel, giving us […]

Ugly but incredible

Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr

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Last Exit to Brooklyn is an incredible book – less a piece of writing and more a howl of pain – albeit one that is also an incredibly difficult read, due to the bleak and brutal depiction of life within its pages. While it’s definitely a 5 star book, it’s not one that I can imagine rereading much without completely losing what’s left of my faith in humanity. Introducing us to some of the denizens of a poor neighbourhood in Brooklyn, we take a peek […]

Straight Forward Approach with Cutting Insights

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After my reread, I tried to remember during which Cannonball Read I had originally discovered this novel, only to realize that I had done most of my Butler reading before I participated in CBR.  I had a short post on my now defunct blog where I mentioned it, but it’s been over ten years (!) since I read this so I had forgotten a lot of the details. Basic plot details: Dana, an African American woman living in California in 1976, starts getting called back […]

A Harsh View of the West, Unblemished by Romanticism

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I have been vaguely intending to read this novel for quite a while but I always ended up prioritizing other books, especially since I didn’t actually already have it in my TBR pile.  I’ve noticed a few Cannonballers mention the Bookriot Read Harder Challenge and since I’d already read a few books that fit into the various categories, I thought it might be fun to participate, and it also provided a push to finally pick up Lonesome Dove to meet the Western requirement. I was, […]

Glad I’m Not In Gilead

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The odds are good that you’ve already read this book, so I don’t really need to tell you what it’s about.  But on the off-chance that you haven’t even heard of it, let’s just say that it’s a page from a future nightmare, a dystopian society where a woman’s role is either a housekeeper, a wife, or a handmaid.  Women in this world don’t have jobs outside the house, and have no money of their own.  If the woman is the wife of a wealthy man, […]



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