Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

What If?

What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe

One Punch, Vol. 2 by One

The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui

The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt

Trick 'r Treat: Days of the Dead by Michael Dougherty

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Well, I finally got my answer, vis-à-vis the autism assessment. I won’t get the definitive answer until Friday when I have the follow-up appointment, as the guy who did my assessment has to first confer with everybody else, but he assured me that he was for sure on it and doesn’t see anybody else swaying him. Finally, that weight is off my shoulders and I have a name to put to why I am the way that I am. Now comes the hard part: telling people. While […]

“We are headed toward the unknown, and we have no choice but to sit quietly in our hard seats and let ourselves be taken there.”

Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline

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This was a book club read, and not one I probably would have picked up on my own. Told in two timelines, we have two main POV characters: Molly Ayer, a 17 year old foster kid who is months away from aging out of the system. Molly is tough, and guarded, and like many foster kids, has been bounced around from placement to placement. Caught trying to steal a library book, Molly has to complete community service hours with nonagenarian Vivian, in order to avoid […]

Satisfying But Not Ridiculous

How to Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie by Bella Mackie

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Best for: People who like a real good revenge story, but also something a little different. In a nutshell: Bella Mackie is picking off her family, one by one. The twist? Most of them don’t even know she’s related to them. Worth quoting: “Tell me if the person I’ve fallen in love with seems like a monster. List the ways. Do a deep dive into it, make graphs. I want all the information.” “The only thing worse than someone who enthusiastically devours all pop culture […]

Gruesome and Grotesque but also Wow!

The Wolf and the Watchman: 1793: A Novel by Niklas Natt och Dag

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Cannonball! I think I was only able to finish this novel, which really is extraordinary, by cheating on it with The House in the Cerulean Sea. I tend to be “monolibrous” — I word I am coining to mean one who does not start a new novel until having finished the one they’re already reading. The Wolf and the Watchman was so intense, and so gritty and disturbing, that I had to take breaks from it. It is to the credit of Swedish author Niklas Natt […]

“What is a game?” Marx said. “It’s tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It’s the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing, you could win. No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent, ever.”

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

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If this doesn’t make my top ten books of the year, I’ll eat something inedible. My cat does it all the time, how hard can it be? This book sucked my entire being into it while I was reading it, and I was a brainless husk just turning pages while my brain was flopping around in there having a grand old time. Sorry if that sounds gross but that’s what happened! I can’t change the facts! This is a book about friendship, love, and video […]

Death on the Installment Plan

Death on the Installment Plan by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

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If you have read Journey to the End of the Night, you already know how that deeply unpleasant that novel is. If you haven’t already read this one, you don’t know yet how much more deeply unpleasant this novel is. But also it’s good? Well, that’s not easy to say exactly. The two novels together helped to break open that other part of life that novels often avoided for obvious reasons. These novels dwell in (though not exclusively) the sexual life of people, as well […]



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