Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Retelling of an Epic Hindu Poem

Kaikeyi by Vaishnavi Patel

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I found this retelling of the epic Hindu poem The Ramayana quite engaging. Vaishnavi Patel is trying to explore what led to the actions Kaikeyi took in that poem by adding nuance and a feminist flair, with varying degrees of success. While I haven’t read the original, I looked up enough to know that Kaikeyi plays an important role but not a large one in the original story. In this version, we witness her childhood as the neglected princess among several princes who are more […]

There are Never Enough Modern Retellings of Pride and Prejudice

Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld

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Timeless satire for the win. The many adaptations of Jane’s Pride and Prejudice only strengthen my admiration of the sly intelligence in the original. Apparently this is the 4th book of the Austen Project, what a delightful discovery. Liz Bennet is pulled back into her hometown Chicago and dysfunctional family dynamics when her father has a health scare. You will recognize the rest of the Bennet characters immediately. Author Curtis Sittenfeld is just loyal enough to the original’s wit, characters and storyline for comfort. This […]

Gossip, Judgement and Destruction – Read this Book

Good People by Patmeena Sarit

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Are we not all outsiders to another person’s life?   Mesmerizing Debut Novel  The novel’s unique structure lacks traditional chapters, paragraphs or narrator. Instead there are 1-2 page personal accounts, giving a 360 degree view of the leadup and the aftermath of one family’s tragedy. I had read about one-third of the book before even learning how somebody died but yet still did not know who had died. There are dozens of unreliable narrators with differing degrees of closeness. Sympathetic words mask superiority, scorn, prejudice […]

Mid-April Review roundup

The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich

Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz

There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm

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It’s time for another mega-post reviewing a bunch of books that have nothing in common with each other! Lousie Erdrich’s The Mighty Red was so achingly beautiful that when I finished it, I got genuinely worried that I would never find a book this good again. Set in the Red River Valley of North Dakota, it follows two farming families during the 2008 financial crisis. There’s a local tragedy, a love triangle, and a scandalous crime, but the centerpiece of the book is Erdrich’s prose. She […]

Japanese Gothic

Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker

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Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker was perfectly fine. I’d even be comfortable saying it was good. In 2026 Lee Turner takes a lot of drugs to treat insomnia, and probably other things that were never named. He unnerves his father, but gets along with his father’s Japanese girlfriend. After Lee kills his college roommate in a sleep medication blackout, he moves to Japan to hide. Which he can do because part of his blackout included a solid coverup. In 1877, after the samurai class […]

The Sorry State of the Modern Malaise Novel

A Thousand Pardons by Jonathan Dee

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The more I read of a particular genre of modern literature, the more it feels the same. The genre is a relative recent one, looking at well-off white people experiencing a midlife change, usually precipitated by crisis. There’s a familiar pattern to the plots which goes beyond typical story beats and almost down to the sentence level. There’s almost a “find & replace” element to them. A few manage to rise above this but most are middling, not bad but not lyrically rich. A Thousand […]



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