Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Last Defender of Camelot – one of Zelazny’s best

Last Defender of Camelot by Roger Zelazny

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After finishing a book I really hated, I needed to cleanse my palate, so to speak. The song Guinevere from Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young came on and I realized it had been a while since I had re-read The Last Defender of Camelot. It does not disappoint. Is the style a bit dated? Sure. Are there some problematic passages in “Damnation Alley”? Without question, especially the Nazi ones and the handling of female characters in that story (one reason why this received 4 stars […]

Roger Zelazny

Trumps of Doom by Roger Zelazny

Blood of Amber by Roger Zelazny

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Trumps of Doom “He started out walking, into the Labyrinth. There seemed to be a faint tune in the air…” I don’t know if I can fully explain why, but within the first few pages of this book, I knew that my biggest complaint about the original series was at least being addressed. Whether or not it’s fixed, we’ll see. This is the follow up series to the Nine Princes of Amber which were published from 1970-1978. This series was first published in 1985 and […]

Courts of Chaos

Courts of Chaos by Roger Zelazny

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It probably doesn’t bode well for my enjoyment of the rest of this series to be earnestly relieved that this fifth book marks the end of the first phase of the series. I possess all the others, which generally means that I will stick it out, or at least have a hard time removing it from my to read pile, but alas. This fifth book does tie a bow on the Corwin section of the series, with the closing of his pursuit of throne of […]

Longs and Shorts

The Big Book of Reel Murders by Ed. Otto Penzler

My Head! My Head! by Robert Graves

The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty

The Twits by Roald Dahl

Heart by Jade Anouka

Hand of Oberon by Roger Zelazny

The Real Cool Killers by Chester Himes

The Green Knight by Iris Murdoch

The Ophelia Network by Mur Lafferty

Deep Hole by Don Winslow

Legal Immigrant by Alan Cumming

Our Town by Thornton Wilder

The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder

The Cube by Adam Rapp

Endgame by Samuel Beckett

Pale Sister by Colm Toibin

Enemies, A Love Story by Isaac Bashevis Singer

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The Big Book of Reel Murders – Edited by Otto Penzler – 4/5 The concept of this collection is still mostly pulpy stories (though with some other older stories and more contemporary stories not really pulpy) that were made into films. It should really be called “Reel Crimes” as not every story involves a murder, but the concept mostly works. It ends up being a little frayed throughout as apparently it’s just much easier to get some rights to stories than others, so like the […]

Some stuff — Round Up

Money by Jacob Goldstein

Sour Sweet by Timothy Mo

Time and Free Will by Henri Bergson

Mind of my Mind by Octavia Butler

The Utopia of Rules by David Graeber

Sign of the Unicorn by Roger Zelazny

Assembly by Natasha Brown

Jews Don't Count by David Baddiel

People Love Dead Jews by Dara Horn

A Fanatic Heart by Ron Rosenbaum

How Civil Wars Start by Barbara Walter

My Evil Mother by Margaret Atwood

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Time and Free Will – 5/5 I am not a philosopher or even particularly well-read in philosophy, so this review is more from the perspective of someone with a literature background, and who is used to using philosophy to serve the aims of literature and philology. This book is particularly suited to the task because through early breakthroughs (or perhaps just ideologies) in psychology — specifically he references William James (and it’s possible he mentions Freud, but I don’t recall it specifically) — to better […]

“Why follow me to higher ground? Lost as you swear I am Don’t throw away your basic needs Ambiance and vanity”

Great Jones Street by Don Delillo

Smoky Joe's Cafe by Bryce Courtenay

The Divine Comedy by Dante

The Junkie Quatrain by Peter Clines

The Eye of the World by Robert Jones

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Gone to Earth by Mary Webb

Guns of Avalon by Roger Zelazny

The Earth is Weeping by Peter Cozzens

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Great Jones Street – 3/5 Stars This is an early Don Delillo novel that is ostensibly about a rock musician who seems to be in his mid-to-late 30s, living in a hotel on Great Jones Street in New York City. I don’t know a ton about New York, but I did happen to see Great Jones Street this summer, and these days, it’s a relatively bland and corporatized street in lower Manhattan. In the novel of the novel, it’s a little more sinister feeling, but […]



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