Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

My Struggle Part five (Some Rain Must Fall) – Karl Ove Knausgard (2010)

My Struggle Part Five by Karl Ove Knausgard

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For the UK title:   This fifth volume of Knausgard’s novel closely picks up after the fourth. Here we find young Karl Over in love with a girl who he has spent exactly 20 minutes with. They will both be students in Bergen in the fall when she begins university and he begins a one-year writing course. He’s 19 and fresh off his teaching job in the country. He’s only 19, so the writing course seems to be a big deal and he definitely feels […]

The Plague – Albert Camus (1947)

The Plague by Albert Camus

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I can’t imagine that anyone who read this novel before 2020 was very much surprised at what came next. This is a novel about plague reaching an Alergian port city, carried by the fleas that inhabit rats. Dead rats start showing up in tremendous numbers around the city, and even though the evidence is clear, the city is small to move on precautions that will save lives. Our narrator is watching this occur and this novel is presented almost as commentary and reportage on the […]

The Fixer – Bernard Malamud (1966)

The Fixer by Bernard Malamud

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This is simply one of the most frightening books I’ve ever read. Like a lot of books, this book is a reminder that the whole world’s been a dystopia depending on who you are. Yakov Bok is a handyman in Kiev. He’s been not exactly passing as gentile to work in a specific neighborhood so much as allowing his unquestioned Jewishness to remain unquestioned. One day is picked up by the police and accused of murdering a local boy and draining his body of all […]

CBR Book Exchange: Thanks debcapsfan!

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Woohooo. CBR gift exchaaaange. Every year I ask if I should, I mean, do I need more books? But the excitement of something fun in the mail AND the chance to gift someone else always wins out and here I am. Big thank you to debcapsfan for giving me to books in my to read pile that I am very excited about and had sort of forgotten were there, making them the perfect gifts. Will be jumping into one of them as soon as a wrap […]

A doorway to a beautifully built new world

Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire

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How do you care for your daughter after she returns from the Land of the Dead? If you’re Nancy’s parents, you take her to Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children. Thus begins Every Heart a Doorway. Nancy is delivered to her new home to get better when all she wants is to return to the world she stumbled upon years ago. As does everyone else under Eleanor’s care. She takes care of and helps those children who have crossed over to other worlds and want nothing […]



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