Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


A twisting tale

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

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I chose to listen to Piranesi purely because it was the 2021 Audie Awards Audiobook of the Year, and was read by none other than the velvet voiced Chiwetel Ejiofor. Piranesi is about a man navigating his life living in a maze, and likewise presents itself to the reader as a puzzle that must be navigated. I’ve seen this book described as ‘beautiful and profound’, ‘spectacularly moving’, ‘stunning’, and ‘a masterful work of weird fiction’. I’m glad to see that it has had the effect […]

Let it go

Good, Great, Perfect by Dr Rebecca Ray

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I read a Tweet recently that said: “Have you felt perpetually guilty every day of your life since you were 6, or are you normal?” Never have I felt so seen. I am a goal-setting, anxiety-having, Type-A, perfectionist. It’s something that was bred into me and carefully cultivated over too many decades to deny. It’s part of my DNA. Or, is it? This free audiobook was suggested to me by Audible (am I so transparent??) and so I gave it a go. Dr Rebecca Ray […]

I don’t know if you’ve heard of this Jane Austen person, but she’s pretty good. She’s going places.

Persuasion by Jane Austin

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At the risk of sounding melodramatic, there is a feeling that I love, but don’t get to experience that often. It’s a kind of melancholic beauty, piercing in its intensity, with a haunted mien and nebulous structure that can be hard to pin down. It is the beauty of autumn rain, dark chocolate, and sad songs. The beauty of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and Peter Heller’s The Dog Stars. The beauty of Joy Williams singing “Don’t Let Me Down”. The beauty of unrequited love, and […]

“This is the man.”

The Crime of the Century: Richard Speck and the Murders That Shocked a Nation by Dennis L. Breo , William J. Martin

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On a hot summer night in 1966, unemployed seaman Richard Speck broke into a Chicago townhouse and murdered eight nurses who lived there – but a ninth, Corazon Amurao, survived to testify against him. I’ve known about the Speck case for several years, and it’s really quite a horrific yet bizarre story that made a great impact on the judicial system in Illinois. I was excited to get into a book that would cover it in depth, but I found myself startled and pleased with […]

The Winter of Our Discontent

Bliss Montage by Ling Ma

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In Bliss Montage, a woman and her family live in the same house as her one hundred ex-boyfriends, women trapped in a toxic friendship take a drug that makes themselves invisible, and a pregnant woman must caretake the protruding arm of her fetus as she awaits giving birth to the rest of it. The distance from everyday life that fantasy brings us can be used to magnify reality, and Ling Ma takes takes ample advantage of this in Bliss Montage, a short story collection that examines […]

“My pain was never more valuable than his potential.”

Know My Name by Chanel Miller

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I saw Know My Name (2019) by Chanel Miller available at the library on audiobook, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to listen to it. I had heard the story of the Stanford swimmer who had sexually assaulted an unconscious woman. I knew that even with two witnesses, he received a light jail sentence. I remembered the collective outrage from the sentencing, and I thought I already knew the story. Add to the fact that rape isn’t exactly a fun topic, and I was leaning against reading […]



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