Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“She’s not a Pisces!” says my fiancee

The Pisces by Melissa Broder

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Where to begin? I guess I’ll simply come out and say it: this is, without any doubt in my mind, one of the worst books I have ever read. We’re talking to the point that even one star is too gracious, which is why I have decided to leave this review as “unrated.” In other words, I give this book literally zero stars and wish I could simply ctrl+z the memory of it from my brain, because I spent all last night after finishing it finding […]

Adaptation in a time of Revolution

A gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

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This was my IRL book club’s choice for our July meeting.  At some point in June, the book was bought, but it was not on my Kindle.  I had not read it until yesterday when i realised i had a week to do so, and apparently it is long. I finished it in an afternoon. It also fits into the CBR bingo space of adaptation (camel). It is the story of Count Alexsander Rostov, who returned to Russia in 1918 from Paris, ensured his grandmother […]

“a responsible witness to the miracle of the ordinary soul”

The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry

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CBR Bingo: Minds Confession first: I’ve had this book kicking around on my shelves–a signed copy, no less!–since 2016, when Sebastian Barry came to give a reading at my grad school institution, an event timed to coincide with the centenary of the Easter Rising. (Small brag: I got to have barbecue with him and historian Roy Foster, along with my dissertation director and a couple other grad students. He was very nice, and when visiting American cities he likes to see what he can find […]

a collection of poisonous surfaces

Ghost Lover by Lisa Taddeo

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CBR Bingo Square: Snake I don’t read a lot of short stories these days except for work, so when the description of Lisa Taddeo’s Ghost Lover piqued my interest, I went ahead and put a library hold on it. I felt optimistic: I’d liked both Carmen Maria Machado’s and Helen Oyeyemi’s short story collections when I read them in the past couple years. Well. Taddeo’s a solid writer, for sure, but I did not like this collection much at all. I stubbornly finished so I could […]

They share a lot, astronomy and childhood. Both are voyages across huge distances.

Bewilderment by Richard Powers

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CBR14 BINGO: Minds Square (all about the mind, memories and raising a neuroatypical child) Powers is on the list of writers whose grocery lists I would read. Few can write the kind of prose this man can about the natural world. Always beautiful, unexpected, and poignant, his books are often about how we can’t seem to help ourselves from destroying the world around us. Despite that, he somehow still manages to drape a warm fuzzy blanket around our shoulders at the same time. There is a […]

“Ursa Major was fictional, only the shape of a bear bounded in stars.

Where the Forest Meets the Stars by Glendy Vanderah

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CBR14BINGO: Star Square (Stars in the title, main character named after a star, all sorts of star gazing and other starry business) Joanna is a graduate student studying the nesting habits of birds at a remote cabin used by her university. A cancer survivor who underwent a double mastectomy, Joanna is also mourning the death of her mother. While finding relief in her research and the solitude of the woods, she is interrupted by a young girl who strolls out of the woods claiming to be […]



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