Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Rated PG-16 and odd

Artichoke Tales by Megan Kelso

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Artichoke Tales by Megan Kelso is a very odd book. At first, I was enjoying this slow-paced story that seemed to have a point. But while I was busy trying to figure out who was who (as the artichoke heads and same tunic clothing made everyone look the same) I was sideswiped. There is a switch in the story and there was no warning. Are we “Then” or “Then-Then” or “Now”? Is this Ramona, Brigitte, or Dorian? (I picked those three as they are mother, daughter […]

A quiet, surprisingly intense emotional reading experience

The Colony by Audrey Magee

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Lloyd, an English artist, takes a boat (not the kind with a motor – a currach, which I had to look up because I was unfamiliar with traditional Irish boats) to a remote Irish island at the edge of Europe in 1979. The artist intends to paint a masterpiece there – all while being a huge pain in the ass to the island inhabitants, which are few in number but mighty in personality. There’s four generations of a family living on the island, but mostly […]

That’s not sparkle. It’s rage-glitter.

The Twelve Dates of Christmas by Jenny Bayliss

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CBR14 BINGO: Holiday square (BINGO! Cold to Holiday BINGO! Gaslight to Elephant. BLACKOUT!!!) (Christmas romance is about as holiday as you can get, I think, and a great way to hit the bingo blackout.) I love holiday romance movies. All of them. I can snort-laugh while I wrap presents when half watching the really terrible ones. I can snuggle up on the couch under my twinkle lights and fall right into the good ones. I can hunt down and bookmark the 10 or so that I have to watch every […]

Dickens in Appalachia

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

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Demon Copperhead, born to a drug-addicted single mother in an Appalachian trailer park, is the protagonist of Barbara Kingsolver’s new novel, a modern re-telling of Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield. Like his literary forebear, Demon’s life will be full of struggle and cruelty, mostly from an indifferent society and from adults who are too focused on their own problems to help out. The beats of the story will be familiar to anyone who has read the original novel. Demon’s mother makes a terrible miscalculation in marrying […]

“I was the kid with the shackle clamped around his wrist:” King’s Latest Doorstopper

Fairy Tale by Stephen King

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I’ve read almost all of the King oeuvre so was excited to see this at 30% off at Target. He’s known as a master storyteller for a reason, and I sped through this in a few days. Over the last few years he’s been mainly playing around with crime novels and thrillers, so this pastiche/homage to classic fairy tales and America’s foundational genre writers like Burroughs, Lovecraft, and Baum was an interesting change of pace. He’s only really written one other fantasy-type novel (Eyes of […]

Men, Follow Your Dreams! Women, errr- just keep on keeping on

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

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I feel like The Alchemist was a ship that I missed when it first sailed many years ago- it was such a sensation that tabloids showed all sorts of famous people (Bill Clinton!) reading it and it was optioned for an (as yet unmade) film. So here I am, reading it only 30 years late. The Alchemist is a very slim novel, just over 150 generously spaced pages. It follows Santiago, a shepherd boy from Andalusia who follows his dream of finding treasure under the […]



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