Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About dreadpiratekel

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Fantasy and horror genre loving Canadian, who is also a library enthusiast, and roommates with a fuzzy freeloader (aka my dog).

dreadpiratekel's Reviews:

Perfectly Modern Emma

Mismatched by Anne Camlin (author), Isadora Zefrino (illustrator)

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The cover of this graphic novel says it is “A Modern Graphic Retelling of Emma”.   I will share my age and say that when I read that my initial thought that it was therefore like Clueless.  Except.  You know.  Clueless came out in 1995.  So.  Maybe not so modern anymore.  Now that I’ve dated myself, let me add that while I have watched Clueless a lot, I have only read Emma once, so I can’t tell you how carefully this hews to the source […]

I Was a Teenage Slasher (or when the book title is so great you need to make it the title of the review)

I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones

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Set at the very end of the 80’s (1989) in Lamesa, West Texas, this book is exactly what the title says it is.  It’s about a slasher (think Ghostface from Scream, or Michael Myers from Halloween and so on) who also happens to be a teenager.  The story is told by Tolly, the slasher of the title, as he explains what happened over a few weeks in 1989.  Tolly didn’t wake up one morning and choose violence, or well he did, but it was only […]

“…and in the old days they did things for a reason. And if you don’t understand why—well, you might end up opening a few doors better left closed. “

Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand

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A story about Windhollow Faire a fictional British folk band, who in the 1970’s England,  rented an ancient and super creepy country house so they could lock themselves down and record an album.  And oh, the text lets us know what an album Wylding Hall (named naturally after the home they were recording in) was, it was the one that made the band capital F famous.  But it came at quite the cost, as the groups lead singer vanishes into the house and is just […]

Happy Horror Days

Christmas and Other Horrors: A Winter Solstice Anthology by Ellen Datlow (Editor), Christopher Golden, Benjamin Percy, Alma Katsu, Terry Dowling, Nick Mamatas, Glen Hirshberg, Garth Nix, Tananarive Due, Richard Kadrey, Stephen Graham Jones, Nadia Bulkin, Josh Malerman, Cassandra Khaw, Kaaron Warren

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I am a big fan of horror all year round, so I am going to be that person right now and be all “Ghost stories at Christmas are Victorian tradition!”  And they were, and I like to embrace this particular tradition.  There are 17 creepy seasonal horror stories in this book, so next year if I am on the ball I might even be able to set up a spooky reading advent-ish adventure for myself. This collection is not just about Christmas, other winter holidays […]

“At Gatsby’s, the clock stood at just five shy of midnight the moment you arrived.”

The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo

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The Chosen and the Beautiful is a retelling of The Great Gatsby, which is told from Jordan Baker’s point of view. Except in this version, Jordan is Vietnamese and has been adopted into the Baker family (via a Missionary member of the family who adopted her in her travels). And oh yes, there is magic—lots and lots of magic. Full disclosure, I have read The Great Gatsby all of once, seen the Baz Luhrmann movie once, and listened to the Broadway Cast recording of the […]

Isolated Island Horror

Hemlock Island by Kelley Armstrong

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A standalone horror novel from Kelley Armstrong, Hemlock Island is the story of Laney Kilpatrick who is renting out her (amazingly described) second home.  She’s doing this begrudgingly, she got the house in her divorce but the cost of maintaining her isolated island home, plus maintaining the apartment she shares with her niece, well it’s share your space with strangers, or not have the house on Hemlock Island at all.  However, some of the people renting out the island home have left some … remnants […]



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