Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Short story review dump (Part I)

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson

Barn Burning by Haruki Murakami

Mastiff by Joyce Carol Oates

A Village After Dark by Kazuo Ishiguro

King of the Elves by Philip K Dick

The Second Bakery Attack by Haruki Murakami

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So I was nerding out a couple weeks ago, and started another database. This time, I wanted to compile a list of all the stories written by as many well-regarded authors as I could think of. It started off with just novels, but quickly grew to include short stories. Which means the database got out of control pretty quickly. I knew that many (most?) authors publish a lot of short stories – but when you actually see them all lined up….. It made me realize […]

The Trouble is This: I Will Not Sell My Loyalty or My Friendship

Thorn by Intisar Khanani

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I have been eagerly awaiting this book for two years. In 2017, shortly after I bought Thorn, it was purchased by Harper Teen. In the past two years, Intisar Khanani has reworked the book and it will be re-published soon. I hope it is wildly successful and makes Khanani buckets of money. I love the way she writes, builds worlds and creates characters. I opted not to reread the older version of thorn, so I don’t know exactly what she’s changed. I received this arc […]

Beautiful prose and a beautiful take on an ancient tale

Circe by Madeline Miller

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Madeline Miller’s Circe has been on my radar since it came out, and The Song of Achilles even longer. There were many reviews on CBR last year of the book, most of them praising it if I remember correctly. But it took me a while to actually pick it up. Clearly I should have before, because I loved it! The novel tells the story of the long life of the demi-god/witch Circe of ancient Greek mythology and her interactions with mortals and monsters and gods. […]

If you’re patient it’s not a bad read.

Dracula by Bram Stoker

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Dracula as a phenomenon has pretty much taken on a life of its own to the point where I thought I knew all about it.I mean, Dracula is Dracula right?! Turns out I don’t! Dracula isn’t at all what I expected. It is told through a collection of diary entries, letters, notes and telegrams following various people through the novel. The story opens with Jonathan Harker traveling from London to the estate of Dracula in Transylvania. It’s all very spooky and mysterious, Dracula doesn’t eat, […]

Have you heard of this author, Margaret Atwood?

Angel Catbird Volume 1 by Margaret Atwood

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What do you do with a book like Angel Catbird Volume 1? You read it. However, the real question is should you have read it? In other words, a book is meant to be read, but did it have to be this book? I had heard of Margaret Atwood (she wrote a little book called The Handmaid’s Tale) but had not realized that she had partaken of the world of illustrations and graphic novels. I admit I only realized she was the author after I […]

This could have been so much better.

Three Dark Crowns (Three Dark Crowns, #1) by Kendare Blake

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As many reviewers have pointed out before me, this book has a great premise, but a lot of that is wasted on the execution of it. The degree to which you think it’s wasted varies in most of my friends’ reviews, but there does seem to be a consensus that wasted premise is the main problem. It also falls into several YA cliché-traps that I really wish it hadn’t, and just goes far enough in pushing the boundaries of the genre for it to be […]



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