Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Soldier’s Pay

Soldier's Pay by William Faulkner

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William Faulkner wrote I think four novels that took place outside of his fictional Yoknapatawpha County. Others take place in other places but explicitly refer back to the county as well. This is one of those novels. It’s also his first novel, and it’s also one of his few works that takes on the idea of flying, this and his novel Pylon, and a handful of stories. He was fascinating by flying and tried to join the US Army’s flying corps, the British flying corps, […]

Hamlet

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

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I am teaching Hamlet again this year, and so I reread it this weekend to remember it before I read it a few more time to build the unit for the students. Later I will let the students review it too. Rereading it it’s hard not to remember how funny, weird, and brilliant Hamlet is, how frustrating he is as a character, and how much he really needs to look at some of the many different foils the play offers up for ways to act. […]

Devil House

Devil House by John Darnielle

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If you thought this was a horror novel going forward, so be it, but don’t write an angry review about it. Admit your mistake and move on. That’s my advice to the Goodreads readers who are SO MAD that this was different than they imagined. And partly this is unfortunate because I think this is a very good novel and it’s beautifully written. The novel itself is broken into several long sections that circulate around a true crime writer who is taking on a murder […]

Insightful and hilarious

Cult Classic by Sloane Crosley

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  CBR Bingo – Minds, as this was a comedic thriller full of mind games (and a possible cult). If you’re looking for something incredibly fun and intensely readable, look no further. I loved this brief ride of a book. I don’t know how I’ve managed to avoid Crosley’s writing until this point, but I plan to add more of her writing to my TBR pile. The premise itself is rather thin – a woman (Lola) meets up with former colleagues for dinner in Chinatown. […]

A Search for the King

A Search for the King by Gore Vidal

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This short early novel by Gore Vidal takes on the story of Blondel and Richard I. If you are like me and don’t or didn’t know the story, basically, Blondel is a famous French troubadour, who befriended Richard during one of his Crusades, and when Richard was captured and imprisoned by the Leopold, Emperor of Austria, and held for ransom. In the novel, Blondel helps to rescue Richard from this captivity and then proceeds to fight alongside him against King John in Nottingham, restoring his […]

You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty

You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi

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CBR Bingo – hot. This book is rather steamy, and you will be inundated with descriptions of the incredible hotness of nearly every character. This book is about grief, and owning your own body and will and exercising those in a way that truly embraces life. But it is ALSO a book about incredibly beautiful, talented people with lots of money lusting after one another in locations so beautiful they belong on the cover of Architectural Digest magazine. It’s a romance novel with some taboo […]



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