Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Deliberate or Cruel

Deliberate Cruelty: Truman Capote, the Millionaire's Wife, and the Murder of the Century by Roseanne Montillo

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I think Roseanne Montillo is on to something when considering why Truman Capote disdained Anne Woodward so much: their similar backgrounds. Neither was born of upper class New York stock. Neither would have gotten anywhere if not for dint of relationship (Truman’s mom landing a Wall Street guy, Woodward apparently being hot enough to bag a Brahmin). Like the song Creep, they don’t belong here. And both took different, yet stylistically similar paths to get where they were. This is an incredibly readable book that […]

Fashionable People Doing Unfashionable Things

Deliberate Cruelty, Truman Capote, the Millionaire's Wife, and the Murder of the Century by Roseanne Montillo

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Content Warning: This book deals with murder, as the title suggests. The book also addresses spousal abuse and suicide. This review mentions the murder but does not touch on the other topics. The novel opens with a bit of snarky back-and-forth between Truman Capote and the Millionaire’s Wife of the title (Ann Woodward), establishing that the two are not on friendly terms. She allegedly uses a slur about his lifestyle (Truman Capote was openly gay) to describe him, and he calls her “Mrs. Bang Bang” […]

Gripping and detailed

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

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I had somehow read all around this book but never actually read it through cover to cover. I have an interest in true crime but also a very low tolerance for being scared so I mostly limit myself to podcasts and the occasional book. In Cold Blood was one of the recommended books on my library app, and as it is recognized as the book that began the genre I thought it was worth the insomnia. In Cold Blood is an exhaustively documented chronicle of the […]

This other bacteria, permitted to age, does not kill a man but leaves in its wake the hulk of a creature torn and twisted.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

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CBR11 BINGO: Back to School Square BINGO BLACKOUT!!! I don’t often re-read. I like to live in the world of a book for a bit and then move on. While there is currently a metric crap ton of books from my high school and college past staring at me from the book shelves in my house, the dust is rarely blown off one unless I am trying to foist it on my teenage son. “Here! This is a gooood book!” I am 99.9% sure that […]

Books to Film: Pal Joey and BUtterfield 8

John O'Hara: Four Novels of the 1930s by John O'Hara

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After recently reading Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s, I decided that I not only wanted to continue with my book-to-film theme, but keep it centered in New York City, too. That led me to John O’Hara’s  Pal Joey and BUtterfield 8. I had heard for years that the 1957 film version of Pal Joey was nothing like the 1940 Rodgers and Hart Broadway musical – Gene Kelly apparently portrayed him as a genuine no-good crumb (as Joey would say). In the film Frank Sinatra isn’t exactly […]

Free Spirit Holly Golightly, Forever a Cipher

Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote

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Breakfast at Tiffany’s the book shares a lot of the same traits as Breakfast at Tiffany’s the film: charming in places, predictable in others, with some questionable and unnecessary ethnic and racist slurs. Truman Capote wrote it in 1958, but the story is set in 1943 as a young, unnamed writer (Capote’s stand-in) moves into a brownstone on the upper east side of Manhattan. He soon encounters his 19 year-old enigmatic neighbor, Holly Golightly. She proceeds to charm and repel him at intervals, while remaining […]



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