Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

In which I finally rectify having never read an American master of writing

Beloved by Toni Morrison

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[TW: violence against children, racial slurs, depictions of slavery, abuse] BINGO – UnCannon In high school I took two AP English classes. In college, I took a Comparative Western Literature course. Toni Morrison was not on any of my reading lists for those courses despite the fact that Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature and that Beloved was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1987 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988. Perhaps, Morrison is not read more at […]

Jungle fever

The Mosquito Coast by Paul Theroux

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Allie Fox is not your average guy. You can tell by the way he raves about the world and the people in it. At first you might think he’s just a little eccentric. After all, he does have some good points. But then you get to know him better and you realise he’s not just some harmless hippie whom you can humour for a minute or two, until you get tired of his ramblings. Fox is an inventor living in USA with his wife, two […]

A Goddess Rewoven

Circe by Madeline Miller

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CBR Bingo – Mythic I bought Madeline Miller’s Circe in hardback, which I almost never do. I didn’t even know much about the book, except it was a bestseller, which doesn’t always count for much. But I was happy to discover that the book’s success was well-deserved. It even made me happy that so many had read and enjoyed it—it is that magical. Circe is a compulsively readable novel about the life of the goddess Circe. I read a lot of myths when I was […]

Billy Summers – Stephen King (2021)

Billy Summers by Stephen King

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A very tightly-focused Stephen King novel that I think will end up being among his best, mostly because he’s able to avoid one of his biggest problems, shunting in supernatural elements into a mostly character-driven narrative. Billy Summers is a for-hire killer, a former Army sniper, who because of a childhood trauma, has a penchant for killing, but only if they’re “bad people”. It’s a year before the pandemic and his new job has him setting up shop for weeks before the job as a […]

Ok, but don’t make a Hobbit of it — Three by Robert Heinlein

Glory Road by Robert A Heinlein

The Star Beast by Robert A Heinlein

Podkayne of Mars by Robert A Heinlein

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Just a full balls to the wall Robert Heinlein novel. This means strong opinions about gender roles! Weird comments about sex! Being American in other worlds! Etc! But more than that, this book is a reaction to the Vietnam War. Rather than making a book that covertly criticizes the war, or worse, making a book that openly supports it, this book looks at Vietnam and questions some core ideas from it. It’s clear that Heinlein knew the war was not like other American wars. This […]

More odds and ends

The Hummingbird's Gift by Sy Montgomery

Stitches by Anne Lamott

Poetic Justice by Amanda Cross

Insurrecto by Gina Apostelo

The Grass Dancer by Susan Power

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt

Goodbye Columbus by Philip Roth

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The Hummingbird’s Gift – 4/5 Stars Mostly a published long essay, but still a compelling story about hummingbirds in general, but specifically those hummingbirds that become abandoned, injured, lost, or otherwise in need of human care to be rehabilitated and brought up to health enough to be part of natural life again. In this book, we find out that hummingbirds exist upon a series of contrasts. They are quite small, but fierce fighters. In the descriptions of the fighting from this book, two birds locked […]



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