Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“My vagina is a crime scene”

Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi

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Bingo: Pandemic I’ve been reading a lot of books this year that focus on women’s experiences – how they relate to themselves, to their partners, to their mothers. Burnt Sugar also falls into that category, as it tells the story of Antara, an Indian woman dealing with her mother’s descent into dementia, while at the same time reckoning with her dissatisfaction with how her life has turned out, and exploring her traumatic childhood. I made the mistake of reading a couple of Goodreads reviews after I […]

“History, rolled, reshaped, undone and mauled”

Carpentaria by Alexis Wright

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CBRBingo: Uncannon (And card full!) Carpentaria is a powerful novel by Waanyi woman, Alexis Wright, set in the fictional town of Desperance on Australia’s remote tropical Gulf of Carpentaria.  It’s a challenging read, with densely beautiful passages of description and distant omniscient narrative that takes sudden dives down into the dirt of this troubled town and its messy inhabitants.  It took me a while to find its rhythm, but then I was hooked. This is a story about a family.  Norm Phantom, who “the Pricklebush […]

Toss a coin to your witcher

The Last Wish by Andzrej Sapkowski

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CBRBingo: Old series I’m a latecomer to Andzrej Sapkowski’s Witcher series, drawn in by the Netflix series and thoroughly earwormed by its ridiculously awesome theme song. I loved the series and was looking to learn more about Geralt of Rivia, Ciri, Yenifer, the Continent and its complex backstory of magic and political intrigue. I certainly learned some more about Geralt, the focus of this linked collection of short stories that tell of his work as a Witcher, a magic-shaped hunter, deperately needed by villages, towns and […]

“For a being as sophisticated as you are, it is baffling how little understanding you have of the composition of your own mind.”

Network Effect (Murderbot Diaries #5) by Martha Wells

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It has been almost three years since I last ventured into the land of Murderbot (January 2019) and while I had to wait like everyone else for Network Effect to publish, I also put it off a little while, over a year in fact. I blame Pandemic brain. Because the minute I picked this one up, I was back with Murderbot and it felt like almost no time at all since I last visited this part of fictional space. Murderbot is still working out this […]

“Whichever story you believe, my mother, Chang’e, became immortal. As did I.”

Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan

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A child of the Moon Goddess, and an immortal herself,  Xingyin grows up on the moon, with just her mother & their family servant/long time companion. For the most part, the three of them are happy, if isolated. Xingyin senses a grief in her mother that she can’t quite explain, and within herself she feels a growing sense to reach out … for something more. She can’t label it, and her mother has warned her against reaching for it, but the pull towards that other […]

Bad Company

Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh

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Unusual. It’s a descriptor that applies equally to Ottessa Moshfegh’s novel and to its title character. Eileen Dunlop narrates the events of a week in her life from a remove of fifty years. At Christmastime 1964, Eileen was 24 years old and living a hopeless existence. Living with her alcoholic father in a crumbling New England home and working at a dreary juvenile detention center, Eileen is socially awkward, malnourished, and getting more detached from reality by the hour. She stalks a co-worker and dreams […]



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