Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Featured Review Archive

These reviews, which were promoted in CBR social media, on our homepage, and in Pajiba Love, appear below by review publication date, not by date featured.

 

You know the cliche about history…

A Fever in the Heartland by Timothy Egan

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Yeah, the one about not knowing it and being doomed to repeat it? Well, here’s exhibit number bajillion, Timothy Egan’s A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them. This likely sounds familiar to you: a man of ill repute, shady origin, and gross appetites seeks to capitalize on the population’s racist and xenophobic impulses by becoming the head of a large organization; along the way he makes a lot of money by extorting […]

A Stolen Life

A Stolen Life by Jaycee Lee Dugard

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This book absolutely broke my heart. And I mean truly broke; I cried in public twice. Once in Pret and again on my train. Jaycee’s story impacted me massively. A Stolen Life is Jaycee Lee Dugard’s memoir of her eighteen years in captivity. She was kidnapped in broad daylight at age eleven, and was kept in her captor’s backyard until she was 29 with two teenage daughters of her own. The book is a difficult read, to say the least. Dugard’s writing is heartbreakingly honest and […]

Read for the translator, stay for the spaceship description

Jumpnauts by Hao Jingfang

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I like Ken Liu’s own writing, but I love his translations. So when Jumpnauts by Hao Jingfang came out about a year ago, I bought it, read the translator’s notes immediately, read the notes to my politely smiling husband, then shelved the book for a later time. The time has come. My knowledge of China is piecemealy and Jumpnauts assumes that the reader has a better understanding of the country and its history than I do – which makes sense since the book and its […]

“The ventricles / are unremarkable.”

Fixer by Edgar Kunz

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Sometimes, you can judge a book by its cover. The cover of Fixer, Edgar Kunz’ second collection of published poems, features a worn lighter. It is obvious the lighter has been used frequently over a long period of time.  The metal is tarnished; the image of a ship sailing on waves is worn. The old Zippo implies the story of a real life lived. That’s the book. The collection is called Fixer, and everything hinges on the poem “Fixer,” a recounting of three brothers managing […]

It appears that 19th century soap opera adventure stories are my thing!

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

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Reviewer Note: In 2024, I started to read the free version of The Count of Monte Cristo that is available from Project Gutenberg (my go-to resource for novels in the public domain). After reading 200 pages, I couldn’t understand why I was so bored. This novel has more action than a Die Hard movie, yet I was struggling to stay interested. I decided to do some research into what’s considered the best translation of this novel, and I found recommendations for the edition translated by Robin […]

The splash of my tongue melting you like a sugar cube

Crush by Richard Siken

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I learned about Richard Siken through Pinterest of all things. For those of you who frequent Pinterest, especially those dedicated to romantic pairings from books, the boards are littered with snippets of poetry rendered in retro fonts. Bits of Siken’s poem Little Beast kept showing up in my feed. However, finding a copy of his Yale Series of Younger Poets poetry collection was challenging and I had to special-order it from the UK. Since it is only sixty-two pages plus a forward, I thought I […]



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