Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Octopus

The Octopus by Frank Norris

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This 1901 novel by Frank Norris feels quite squarely with a foot in both the 19th and 20th centuries, and of course in publication in 1901 suggests that it quite literally does. The book is subtitled “A Story of California”, so it has the trappings of California novels — references to the old Spanish inhabitants, a blending of American and Mexcian people, culture, food, a reverence for the land, wine, and a struggle between the greatest potential of lived experience and the truly harrowing exploitation […]

Not For Me

Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

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Best for: Fans of Sally Rooney’s books. In a nutshell: Eileen and Simon have known each other since they were little. Alice and Eileen have been friends since university. Eileen and Felix have just met. Events transpire. Worth quoting: “I think I have by now forgotten how to conduct social intercourse. I dread to imagine what kind of faces I was making, in my efforts to seem like the kind of person who regularly interacts with others.” Why I chose it: This was in a […]

Like Don Hertzfeldt abstracted even further

Heaven No Hell by Michael DeForge

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I had planned on making If It Bleeds by Stephen King my first book of 2022, simply to give me a reason to compare to and rant about his other book that I read last year (Billy Summers), but Heaven No Hell was too quick a read to not sneak in first. Did I feel a tad awkward reading some bits in the breakroom at work? Of course. Still, the shame was very short lived thanks to it being such a page turner. To give […]

Okay, you’re almost all villains. No ‘if’.

If We Were Villains by M L Rio

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Oliver is in his fourth and final year of his program at Dellecher Conservatory for the Fine Arts. He and his classmates have been studying Shakespeare together since day one at Dellecher, and they are all at their breaking point from the intense program and pressure of their coursework. There’s Richard, larger than life  antagonist whose intensity is thrilling to watch on stage but terrifying to live next to. There’s Meredith, the sexy vixen  that everyone wants to be or be with. Filippa, a woman […]

And to top it all off, faeries are dicks

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

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“I was told you were dead!” he cried. “I was sure you would be.” There was a pause. Both men felt faintly embarrassed. The ranks of dead and wounded stretched away upon all sides as far as the eye could see. Simply being alive at that moment seemed, in some indefinable way, ungentlemanly. In 2020 and 2021, I dove headlong into fantasy and scifi. As the pandemic raged, I couldn’t tear myself away from magicians, witchers, mistborns, kandra, grisha, alien invasions, teenagers trapped in a […]

We’re all idiots

Anxious People: A Novel by Fredrik Backman

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I think this might be the perfect novel to start the year, and it is certainly an excellent choice for the times we live in. For the CBR13 gift exchange, I listed Fredrik Backman as an author I would like to read, and Emmalita was kind enough to gift Anxious People to me. This novel is delightful. It’s frequently hilarious, with a truly daft kind of humor, but it also displays tremendous heart and kindness to the point of tears for me. The story does […]



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