Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About denesteak

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denesteak's Reviews:

I read a young adult book on India’s partition and felt like my heart was absolutely shredded

The Night Diary by Veera Hiranandani

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The world is burning at the moment, and we may be hyper focused on the US trying to gun for the “Most Likely to Revert to a Dictatorship” award or Israel’s decision to start double-fisting wars or (literally happened today) US’s decision to join the Iran-Israel conflict — but do you know that WWIII came very close to breaking out in May? India and Pakistan — both nuclear-armed, and both sworn enemies since the Brits left — started bombing each other over militant attacks in […]

A Flavia de Luce word jumble: puppets, weed, a 1950s pregnancy test, and pigeon droppings that save lives

The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley

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Years ago, when I was going through a reading drought because life was getting in the way, I desperately needed an escape and Alan Bradley’s first Flavia de Luce mystery nudged a little bit of lightness back into my life (I even wrote a review, which is quite out of character for me). Our recent CBR chat about mysteries reminded me how much I enjoyed sinking into Flavia’s wanderings about Bishop’s Lacey, the rural English town she lives in, so I decided it was time […]

‘Before my wife turned vegetarian, I’d always thought of her as completely unremarkable in every way’

The Vegetarian by Han Kang

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I visited Seoul in March for a flash holiday and on my way back, I stopped in a bookstore at Incheon airport. In their small English section, the only books they provided were English translations of books by South Korean authors or travel guides for the country. No Tim Cook biography, no Mitch Albom, no Dan Brown or whatever else you’d typically find in an airport bookshop. I found that so clever — restricting the English-language offerings to art created by South Koreans. This capitalistically […]

‘What else is there to say? That I loved him more than I ever thought it was possible to love anyone.’

After You'd Gone by Maggie O'Farrell

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One thing I kept thinking about while reading After You’d Gone by Maggie O’Farrell were the words of a colleague, “The truth will out.” He had said this more than a decade ago when we were discussing certain politicians involved with atrocities and corruption. His belief was that it doesn’t matter how long it takes, or in what form, but no matter what, the truth will come out. It’s something I come back to these days as we flail in this purgatory of misinformation. What […]

‘Who wants us, outside? The world is full of terrible people’: A castle can be a home, a fortress, a prison

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

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Since I finished We Have Always Lived in the Castle — my second Shirley Jackson thanks to JenX’s recommendation — I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the things that are not said. We go through so much of life living in our own heads while interacting with others who carry their own histories and lives and have their own shit happening. As important as it is to hear what is said to us, just as important is the ability to see the meaning behind […]

Space ship psychologist becomes a not-great detective on a mysterious mission

We Have Always Been Here by Lena Nguyen

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I don’t remember what prompted me to download “We Have Always Been Here” on my Kindle — it must have happened during a moment of rare reading motivation before that was extinguished by *gestures* life — but I thought a space thriller could be a promising page-turner for my second read of the year. And while it’s definitely happening in space and I definitely wanted the pages to keep turning (to reach the end), this novel by Lena Nguyen was ultimately disappointing. The brief glimmers […]



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