Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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.

 

This Sh*t Is Bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S

Final Girls by Riley Sager

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A young woman stumbles out of the woods in a red dress, screaming loudly that someone is chasing her. A nearby police officer finds her and shoots the crazed killer, a psychopath who has escaped from a nearby mental hospital. Years later, Quincy is known as a ‘final girl’: the only survivor of a bloody massacre. There are other Final Girls and when one of them dies, another comes to find Quincy. Quincy, at first, is happy to have Sam with her: Sam knows what […]

A Guest in the House: a twisty, turny, graphic novel

A Guest in the House by E.M. Carroll

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mood music: Crazy – gnarls barkley The last graphic novel I read was Batman: The Killing Joke by Alan Moore, a dark and gritty telling of the Joker’s origins as a failed comedian turned violent criminal. This seems to be a pattern with the graphic novels that I gravitate towards, including Watchmen and Maus, and this novel is no different. Written and illustrated by E.M. Carroll (formerly Emily Carroll), the story tells the tale of Abby, a recently married discount store clerk, and follows her day-to-day with […]

I just want to see what the performance reviews look like

The Fund: Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates, and the Unraveling of a Wall Street Legend by Rob Copeland

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Like the delightful Marie Kondo, I love mess. Especially if it’s someone else’s. Copeland tells the origin story of Ray Dalio, hedge fund phenomenon turned self-help guru. Though an indifferent student in school, Dalio was locked in at his gig as a caddy for the wealthy where he made the connections that led to the establishment of Bridgewater Associates. At first, Dalio obsesses over building a kind of Grand Unified Theory for investing that accounts for the vagaries of geopolitics. Once he has successfully codified […]

I ain’t no fortunate son

The Women by Kristin Hannah

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I have never actually read any Kristin Hannah before but this was the selection for the month for a book club I am in – I know The Nightingale was very popular at one point but I think I just hit the point of wondering how many more World War II novels we needed right around the time it came out? But I also get the the appeal – because World War II, at least from an American perspective, is one that is easy to […]

Do I like short books?

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

Boulder by Eva Baltasar

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I find it a lot harder to explain why I liked a book than word vomiting about why it did not work for me. It becomes worse when it’s something I wouldn’t be inclined to like but something about the particular execution worked for me. So bear with me while I betray my academic roots and partake in an exercise of praise-writing. These books deserve that. On paper, Eva Baltasar’s Boulder (incredibly translated by Julia Sanches from the original Catalan) should not have worked for […]

All That Glitters

Hotel Magnifique by Emily J. Taylor

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This was a nicely structured fantasy novel with the kind of plucky heroine I enjoy.  Jani and her younger sister, Zosa, are living grimly in a port town called Durc.  They made the trip to Durc after their mother died so that Zosa could pursue a singing career but four years later, Zosa is no closer to becoming a singer than she was when they arrived and Jani is working at a tannery to try to earn their passage back home (a task that looks […]



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