Cannonball Read 12

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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I am putty in Madeline Miller’s hands

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

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I used to love Greek and Roman mythology as a kid, but Achilles and the Battle of Troy never interested me much. Too much gore and to be honest Achilles seems like a real douche. But Madeline Miller’s Circe was one of my favourite reads of 2019, so I figured that if any version of his story was ever going to be compelling, it was her debut novel, The Song of Achilles. The book is narrated by Patroclus, who as a boy is exiled by […]

Desperate for answers, I tore through this book – and then there were no answers.

Trust Exercise by Susan Choi

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Desperate for answers, I pretty much blocked out the world to finish this book as fast as I could – and then there were no answers. Susan Choi as an author is a neutral higher power who knows what you want and then calmly chooses not to give it to you, leaving you spinning in place and trying dumbly to figure out what on earth just happened. “Think, use your brain, you’ve got this.” This makes it sound like I disliked the book. I did […]

A vibrant coming-of-age story and a nice distraction from quarantimes

Dominicana by Angie Cruz

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Dominicana is a story of finding growth, opportunity, and autonomy in a life you never asked for. Ana Cancion grows up surrounded by people she loves in the Dominican countryside with no desire to leave, but when a prominent local businessman twice her age wants to marry her and take her to New York,  she doesn’t have much of a choice. As the first in her family to move to America, it’s on her to send money back to her parents and work to bring […]

You know when it’s not the book’s fault you didn’t like it, you just read it at the wrong time?

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

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I read On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous as a book club pick during the dead time between Christmas and New Year’s, and resented it the whole time for not being a lightweight romance or cozy mystery. If I had read it in deep February, I might have loved it. On Earth is a novel about inherited childhood trauma written as a letter by the narrator, Little Dog, to his mother, who will never read it. It jumps from events before his birth – the devastating […]



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