Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“You can’t erase what you know. You can’t forget who you are.”

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

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I’m really late to the party on this classic. I read the 25th anniversary edition, which included a beautiful forward by the author in which she explains who she was while she was writing this book. A young woman, on the cusp of being a true adult- a woman who wanted badly to please her father and also to satisfy her writer’s heart. She was learning how to express herself, and out came this series of vignettes about life growing up in Chicago. The people […]

Where is my mind?

The Last House on Needless Strett by Catriona Ward

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It’s hard to talk about this book without spoilers – and as much as I WANT to talk about it, I really don’t want to spoil it for you, because the revelations are part of the appeal. This is a book about missing children, adults with mental illness, a sort of revenge-plot, and cats. It’s about abuse and survival and hunting. It’s about living on the margins, and making amends with your past. What details can you have about the plot? Well, let’s see … […]

CK-UP

The Fuck-Up by Arthur Nersesian

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If you saw this book in 1997 when it was first published and began appearing in bookstores, especially the likes of Books-a-Million or Barnes or Noble, you might recognize the cover. It was deeply scandalizing and deeply alluring. In reality the book is not really either, and this ends up being a pretty good book of a kind, with a bad title. The title promises what the book can’t really deliver, and while the book is funny and weird and sad, it’s not so much […]

Pilgrim’s Progress, Or Why It’s Important to Follow Directions

The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan

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The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan My rating: 3 of 5 stars Growing up in a Christian faith-community, I had heard off and on of “Pilgrim’s Progress”. No one I knew had actually read it, but the gist of the story was passed around. I’ve been trying to revamp my British literature course and my Enlightenment/Interregnum period needs some work. This book happens to fall into that period and since I teach at a Christian private school I figured it might be a good fit. […]

Perfect Halloween Read

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas

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I am part of a YA for everyone book group at my local library. The organizer tries to pick books that fit the time of year, so for October, Halloween, we are reading Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas. I had no idea what this book was about, which is sometimes a great way to be pleasantly surprised.  Well, I really liked this book, it was such a fun ghost story. Yadriel is a trans teen who is trying to become a brujo. His Latinix family […]

“Some people are made to be lonely.”

Velvet Was the Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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I love how reading books can transport you to anywhere – and I love learning about different points in history through a really great novel. I knew almost nothing about the government in Mexico in the 1970s – and I wouldn’t say I am not “educated” about it, but I did fall into some interesting Wikipedia holes as a result of this book. The premise is that a group called the Hawks (a real paramilitary group in Mexico) have functioned to make a student protest […]



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