Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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I teach literature to college kids in the Midwest. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: tiny_bookbot's Quick Questions interview.)

tiny_bookbot's Reviews:

“I want you to see me. That’s why I shine like this.”

Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa

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CBR Bingo: Recommended When I was in the early days of my summer of Irish fiction, I visited a couple friends in DC and one of them passed off her copy of this novel to me. “When you get a moment, I think you’ll like it. It’s an easy read, but not a dumb one–more like where you feel better at the end of it.” Since I read plenty of serious and/or bleak stuff, I’m always grateful for a recommendation like that, but it took me […]

Saxon sisters in post-Roman Britain

Dark Earth by Rebecca Stott

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CBR Bingo: Question Most historical fiction set in England involves a few specific historical time periods: the high/late medieval era (think Chaucer or Thomas Malory), the Elizabethan era, the Victorian era, WWI and WWII. But the early medieval period (the time we once might’ve been used to calling “the Dark Ages”) is less popular, though there have been standout novels set in the era (Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant, Rosemary Sutcliffe’s novels such as Sword of Sunset, Bernard Cornwell’s Warlord Chronicles). This period of flux following the Roman withdrawal from […]

“To die like the skylark”

The Slain Birds by Michael Longley

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CBR Bingo: Bird I joked a couple years ago that the best day is Wake Forest Press Book Club Day, in part because you never know when it’s going to happen. Wake Forest Press focuses on publishing Irish poetry, particularly the Irish poets who aren’t, say, Seamus Heaney or Eavan Boland and claimed by a Big Five publisher. Because it’s a small operation, books come out a bit irregularly and also during the pandemic, shipments were sometimes oddly spaced (I once got three volumes all […]

“to each was given days and chances which wouldn’t come back around”

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

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CBR Bingo: Cold Well, the semester started, and away with it went my brain, or at least the part of it I use for writing. Still! I’ve been reading! So time to eke out a review or two before I crumble. Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These came to my attention along with Audrey Magee’s The Colony when it was long listed for the Booker Prize. Magee didn’t make the shortlist, but Keegan did, and Small Things Like These has the honor of being the shortest novel to ever […]

“some perfect and unexplainable force of love”

Strange Flowers by Donal Ryan

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CBR Bingo Square: Time I mentioned my summer of Irish fiction to my former mentor, and after recommending Dorothy Macardle to him, he enthusiastically recommended Donal Ryan, and especially his newest book, Strange Flowers, to me. Turns out one of the libraries where I hold a card had a digital copy available, so I checked it out (and ordered two of his previous novels) and got to work. Y’all, it was a good recommendation. The novel unfolds in distinct parts, each named for a book of […]

“Evil never goes unpunished…but the punishment is sometimes secret.”

Peril at End House by Agatha Christie

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CBR Bingo Square: Camel/Adaptation “Poirot,” I said. “I have been thinking.” “An admirable exercise my friend. Continue it.” Alright, it’s not all just highfalutin’ theme reading over here (but the summer of Irish fiction rolls on), I am also cramming in books that are simply and purely for fun. Most of my Golden Age crime fiction reading for the past year or two has been working through Ngaio Marsh’s back catalog, but I’ve also been dabbling in some Christie here and there. And I really […]



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