Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Poetry in Fiction

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

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Cyrus Shams has been adrift for years. Born in Iran, he lost his mother very early when her plane was shot down by mistake by a U.S. Navy warship. (This really happened. Look up Iran Air Flight 655 for more information.) His father took Cyrus to Indiana, of all places, where he worked himself to death on a chicken farm before Cyrus had finished college. In 2017, Cyrus has sobered up and finally graduated, but he’s still hanging around his college town, bumming around at […]

This is me writing 600 words about a book I barely remember.

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

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I watch a lot of YouTube. Like, the vast majority of everything I watch is on YouTube. Everything from podcasts and history documentaries to British panel shows like Taskmaster. The one thing I haven’t had much luck with is book chanels, though. Which isn’t to say there isn’t a ton of literary content on there – but most of what’s out there, that I’ve found, is book reviews. Which I obviously can’t say anything bad about – after all, look at what I’m doing now. But […]

Connections and Questions

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

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Best for: People who like a mystery that doesn’t involve figuring out who killed someone; people who are interested in exploring people beyond what they choose to share. In a nutshell: Someone has robbed a bank, run, and is now holding hostage a group of folks at an apartment viewing. Worth quoting: “If the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence, that’s probably because it’s full of shit.” “Most people never become individuals to us. They remain people.” Why I chose it: […]

The girl who won’t quit

Asadora!, Volume 8 by Naoki Urasawa

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Due to some of the “extras” in the story itself, and the multiple story lines happening at once, things are a little slower than I would have liked, making Asadora!, Volume 8 by Naoki Urasawa a 3.5 or even 3.75 and not a “pure four.”  However, this edition shows more of the history of Japan in the 23 years after the war and what the later 1960s looked like. This has not been as explored due to the fact we have been monster hunting up […]

Don’t Mean to Spy

Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner

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I’ve tried Rachel Kushner’s books before but they’re a little over my head. However, I’m on a spy kick and it just so happens that her new one is a critically acclaimed spy novel and, while knowing it would still be different from the usual pulpy thrill of typical espionage fare, I decided to try it. The cool thing about writing espionage is that we all desire to lead secret lives and espionage fiction allows us to explore that. The sad necessity of hiding human […]

Renovation Horrorshow (Or “I don’t deserve to be haunted by cows”)

Haunt Sweet Home by Sarah Pinsker

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Take reality TV ghosthunting, marry it with reality TV home makeover and then write a book about a Production Assistant (PA) working on said show and you get – Haunt Sweet Home!    And if you are me, you get a book that started stressing me out even before we got to the creepier bits. Mara is our lead character and she is sort of adrift. She’s an only child, the youngest cousin in a sprawling family of musicians (except she has no musical talent), […]



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