Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Final 2024 Leftovers

1876 by Gore Vidal

Joe Country by Mick Herron

James by Percival Everett

Slough House by Mick Herron

Kiss Her Goodbye by Allan Guthrie

The Contemplative Tarot: A Christian Introduction to the cards by Brittany Muller

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Hope everyone had a wonderful 2024. Remember that while we can’t control the horrors of the world, there is joy to be found in the presence of those we love. 1876**** Didn’t hit as hard as Burr; Burr’s presence was the center of the story that made it go, whereas this book wants to highlight every major player in the 1876 election. But Vidal does a good job of evoking the atmosphere of the time: the unapologetic corruption, the paranoia of another war and the […]

The Other Side of Huckleberry Finn

James by Percival Everett

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CBR16 Bingo: Fanfic – This book is a reimagining of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn which centers the viewpoint of the runaway slave Jim who accompanied Huck on his travels on the Mississippi. Jim is well-known as Huckleberry Finn’s runaway slave companion, but in this retelling we meet him as James, a character for who the stakes are higher and the world much more vicious than we ever glimpse in Mark Twain’s classic novel. It’s been a long while since I last read […]

A Novel About Race, Identity, and Satire

Erasure by Percival Everett

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I learned about this novel when the movie American Fiction came out (which I’m hoping to see this weekend). It’s striking and sad how relevant this 23-year-old book still is when it comes to race and racial stereotypes. Percival Everett provides a sharp critique of race. It’s biting and funny and depressing and tragic. Told through journal entries, it follows Thelonious (Monk) Ellison during a time when he is facing dramatic changes in his family and has chosen to write a book intended to be […]

Erasure/American Fiction

Erasure: A Novel by Percival Everett

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I heard good things about the movie version of this book (American Fiction), but since I haven’t been able to see it, I decided to just go to the source. This 2001 novel, a Pulitzer Prize nominee, is short but punchy and full of literary references that I could probably spend years investigating. It’s a riveting story but one of those novels that I know I am only partly understanding. Everett includes an incendiary novel within his novel, and exposes the many forms erasure takes. […]

I’ve Got a Name

James by Percival Everett

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“All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn,” wrote Ernest Hemingway. Percival Everett’s response is getting similarly rave reviews, and is being heralded by some as the literary event of the year. Does it, can it, live up to the hype? The titular James is, of course, the enslaved Jim from Twain’s classic, who joins with Huck on a journey down the Mississippi River during which they grew close and run into a series of adventures. The character has […]

Rise.

The Trees by Percival Everett

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What if the dead don’t have to stay dead? How do we deal with tragedy so vast, and so systematic, so enshrined in our institutions? Percival Everett’s novel The Trees responds to that question by positing a world in which the past won’t stay buried. In Money, Mississippi (a place I had to look up to verify it’s reality, despite its imaginary qualities in this novel) the local cops are faced with a series of strange murders. This fictional version of Money is home to Carolyn […]



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