Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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About KStar

CBR11 participant
CBR12 participant

Avid reader, but I tend to get stuck in a genre rut. Hoping this will force me out of my narrow comfort zones. Not to mention, I've been a Pajiba lurker since 2004, so it's about time I actually participated in the community discourse.

KStar's Reviews:

All Y’all’s Rave Reviews Finally Got Me

Red, White, & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

by 1 Comment

Red, White, & Royal Blue had been on my radar for a few months now, but when I picked up a copy at the bookstore and flipped through the first few pages, I thought it was a case of misplaced hype. Alex acts like such a dick to Henry in the first chapter, for seemingly no good reason, that I was turned off by the whole dynamic. Not to mention, the adult son of the president should know better than to get drunk at an […]

in which i take a premise and push it past its breaking point

Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur

by 6 Comments

the first encounter references in tweets memes and captions –rupi kaur i thought i needed to read more poetry in my life. i think the voices of others, more different than me, lives lived outside of myself, will broaden my horizon, make me a better me i tell myself this is for my own good, to subject myself to other’s emotional trauma   idiosyncratic writing style. disregard for conventions of grammar. it takes a lot of effort to paint a picture that is unconventional and […]

Ronan Farrow’s Old Bosses at NBC Probably Don’t Talk to Him Any More

Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators by Ronan Farrow

by 6 Comments

I thought that Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow would be a book about Harvey Weinstein, and it is, kind of. Although he is a figure of lurking menace that skulks through the margins like a tumor, Weinstein isn’t the central antagonist. Really, Catch and Kill is a book about the complicity of self-preservation. I have a problem with finishing a lot of non-fiction books. Usually I hit page 200 and stop caring. At that point, many authors have run out of interesting things to […]

Eleanor Oliphant is Really F*cked Up

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

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Of course, it was pretty much a given that the titular Eleanor Oliphant of Gail Honeyman’s debut novel would not be completely fine, since stories about completely fine, well-adjusted people do not lend themselves to compelling narratives. However, everything I knew about this book going into it (a soothingly neutral artsy cover, the review pull-quotes on Amazon, Reese Witherspoon’s folksy Southern-fried endorsement) did not prepare me for level of trauma experienced by our protagonist. Eleanor isn’t just not fine, she is grappling with massive psychological […]

Well, that was NOT the book I was expecting to read

The Power by Naomi Alderman

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… but really, that’s on me. I picked The Power out of a quick list of available novels from my library’s ebook app, after giving the synopsis a casual perusal. I thought I was checking out a low-stakes feminist YA fantasy that I could burn through in a couple of hours before moving on with myself. As is turns out, not every book featuring teenage girls and supernatural powers is a lighthearted fantasy romp with a conclusion that ties everything up with a convenient and […]



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