Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Was I supposed to dislike the main character by the end?

The Three Lives of Cate Kay by Kate Fagan

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This novel kind of fell apart for me after the midway point. I was enjoying it during the first part but once all the reveals have occurred, there isn’t quite enough substance there to hold it together. Post reveal, there is just more space to think about it all, making the character choices more frustrating and revealing the weakness of some of the premises. The novel is set up as a memoir – Cate Kay is the author of the one of the most famous […]

If a Gay Man Hands You His Phone . . .

The Guncle by Steven Rowley

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I’m not sure what I was expecting when I started this book. Probably something light and feel-good, based on the breezy, bright cover. And it is, but it was also more emotional than I expected. GUP (Gay Uncle Patrick, AKA Guncle Patrick) is a semi-retired actor (not officially retired but also not choosing to work) living a somewhat isolated life when he is abruptly thrust into the caretaker role for his niece Maisie and nephew Grant after their mother dies and their father enters rehab. […]

The Expanse keeps expanding!

Cibola Burn by James S.A. Corey

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This is the fourth book in The Expanse series, and sees the focus both narrow back to our main crew while also expanding into genuinely new worlds. I have been making my way through both the books and the TV series at the same time, and am now at the point where my reading is how way beyond my TV progress, but it’s ok. In this series, focal character James Holden is a perennial optimist, with noble ideas about humanity and truth and morality. He’s […]

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

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This was a DNF at 30 percent. I really tried to get into this one and just gave up in the end. I heard nothing but great things about it, but I think it just jumped around too much for me to really get invested. The first couple of pages read as bizarre and I think I just got annoyed because I thought this was going to be a ghost story in a bookshop. And I don’t know. I just kept reading and reading and […]

All This Can Be True by Jen Michalski

All This Can Be True by Jen Michalski

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Please note that I received this book via NetGalley. This did not affect my rating or review. Well, this was a book. I don’t even know what to say except there was a reason why this one took me a while to get through and read. It was just dense. I got tired of the long winded chapters via Quinn and Lacie. I felt like there was just way too much going on and not enough at the same time. I think in the end […]

“For even to listen to the story of the Trưng Sisters is, in these troubled times, a dangerous act.”

Bronze Drum by Phong Nguyen

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The Trưng sisters, Trắc and Nhi, are as different than each other than sisters can be, but they are united in one thing – their outrage at the treatment of the Viet by the colonizing Han Chinese. When their outrages grow too heavy to bear, they raise an army of women to fight back. It occurred to me while I was reading this book that not only do I know very little about Vietnam past the eponymous war (and even that mostly through the eyes […]



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