Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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I write about what I read so I can tell people I have a blog. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: genericwhitegirl's Quick Questions interview.)

genericwhitegirl's Reviews:

Remember Slenderman? Here’s the case that made him famous outside the internet

Slenderman: Online Obsession, Mental Illness, and the Violent Crime of Two Midwestern Girls by Kathleen Hale

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In 2014, in Wisconsin, a young girl was nearly killed. There were a number of reasons this case was unusual, but among the top were that it was perpetrated by two 12-year old girls and that the apparent motive revolved around the fictional and internet-famous Slenderman. While this sounds fascinating, it was less about Slenderman and more about the delusions kids can talk themselves into. What was more relevant is the fact that one of the two girls was experiencing undiagnosed schizophrenia at the time. […]

The magic of these worlds is fading for me, but I’ll keep trying…

In An Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire

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If you aren’t familiar with this series, it begins with Every Heart a Doorway, a novella about Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children. West runs a boarding school for children who have been to other worlds and returned unable to readjust to regular life. Every Heart a Doorway introduces a lot of children who have traveled to these worlds, but doesn’t really flesh out individual stories. McGuire’s subsequent books explore these individual stories. One of the great things about this series is that you don’t […]

Terrible the first time through, amazing on re-read

Blindsight by Peter Watts

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This book was so good, I read it twice. And I don’t mean, I read it years ago and wanted to read it again, like LittlePlat mentioned in their review (which is what got me to pick up this book!). No, I read it (or rather, listened to it) about a week ago, finished it feeling I hadn’t retained much, and then immediately re-read it. On the first go, I was constantly confused about what was going on and who the various characters were. I […]

Horrifically funny

The September House by Carissa Orlando

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Have you seen the show Ghosts? It’s a campy sitcom about a woman who sees ghosts in her house and has learned to live with them. This is kinda like that, but a lot more macabre, and a lot more funny! If it isn’t bad enough to live in a haunted house, try living in this haunted house in September! The ghosts act up more than usual, the walls bleed profusely, and forget about sleeping, with all the moaning and screaming. But Margaret is resigned […]

I don’t recommend reading a sequel before reading the first one

The Candy House by Jennifer Egan

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This book made me kinda mad. But it’s partially my fault. Apparently it’s a sequel and I’m not sure how I didn’t know that going in. For those who live under a rock, like me, Jennifer Egan wrote A Visit From the Goon Squad. Did you know there’s a sequel to that? Yeah yeah. I’m not convinced you need to read one to get the other though. Based on Egan’s style of writing, which is to say, eclectic. There are a multitude of characters with […]

I was probably the target audience for this book when it was written, 25 years ago. But I still love it today.

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

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“Your words are kindling, twigs covered in wax, soaked in lamp oil, sticky with tar. Your breath is a match, scratching along sandpaper… Whisper break the silence, one word, then two…with every word spoken a loud victory. The words burst into flames, the silence, broken.” This imagery from the novel’s foreward was so powerful and poetic, and the story hadn’t even started yet! But what a great story it is, and beautifully told – even though one doesn’t think of freshman year of high school […]



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