Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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A Beautiful, Quiet, Reflective Book

The Ferryman and His Wife by Frode Grytten, translated by Alison McCullough

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CW: violent animal death This is a quiet, reflective book with beautiful, emotionally restrained prose that somehow still manages to be gently emotional. Nils Vik wakes up on what he knows will be the last day of his life and goes about his normal daily routine. He is a ferryman in Norway, someone who has spent decades carrying people across a fjord, and on this final day he follows a familiar route while also collecting the dead. These are former ferry passengers he once knew, […]

In case you were wondering, there aren’t really any werewolves in this book.

The Werewolf Principle by Clifford D. Simak

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Quite an interesting little book. And charming, in the way that a lot of 1960s/70s sci-fi is charming—I love the way that people thought the future might be (in this case, a world government, smart houses that take care of humans and that can fly), and also in this case, Simak’s imagination doesn’t really gel with science as we know it. But if you suspend your disbelief, you get a weird little book about a man found frozen in space who turns out to have […]

Unlikable Done Right

Best Offer Wins by Marisa Kashino

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Marisa Kashino’s Best Offer Wins features one of my favorite tropes, the unlikable female main character (UFMC). Writing a UFMC is such a difficult balancing act: make her flawed enough to be engagingly frustrating, but not so flawed that the reader can’t quite believe that anyone would be willing to put up with her BS. The Queen of UFMC is of course Amy Dunne from Gone Girl. (Spoilers ahead for Gone Girl in case you want to continue living under that cozy rock.) She is […]

I understand less than half the words in that sentence, but God bless the book people for their boundless knowledge absorbed from having words instead of friends.

A Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee

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“Are you going to be sick?” I raise my head. The duke is gone, but Helena is on the window seat, twisting her necklace around her fingers. I don’t answer, because I don’t believe a prisoner owes his captors any sort of report on his health. That, and if I’m going to be sick, I’d prefer to do it all over her, and I’d prefer it to be a stealth attack. ― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue On paper, Henry “Monty” […]

Fake It ‘Til You Make It, Then Keep Faking It

Theatre by W. Somerset Maugham

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When your mayor declares a state of emergency, and you get a rare snow day, it’s time for an old-school reading aesthetic. Hot tea? Check. Cozy blanket? Check. Minor classic that’s been sitting on your TBR for the past three years? Check. “Stage Door Theatre Breaks in London” by AndyRobertsPhotos is licensed under CC BY 2.0 . I wasn’t terribly interested in Maugham until I read a fictionalized version of him in Tang Twan Eng’s The House of Doors, which had me idly googling to learn […]

This hasn’t helped me decide on the value of prequels

La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman

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I was inspired to read this book following Classic’s review of The Rose Field (scathing though it was). I have appreciated the His Dark Materials trilogy for a while, although I find the criticism of a very Christian normative form of organised religion hits differently from an Islamic perspective. The ideas of a authoritarian church-state read differently from a religious perspective where faith and society are enmeshed alternatively. I’ve not really been tempted to read the prequel books as I always find the liminal space […]



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