Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Welcome to the Dead Dads Club, Florence…(sniffle)

The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston

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Let me start by saying I judged this book before reading it. I picked it because I thought it would be fluffy. This book reached into my heart and squeezed it hard; probing me for grief I had forgotten about. It made me laugh and remember amazing things about my own family at a specific time in my life.  It left me so very very satisfied and yet grief stricken while giggling sometimes. This book is anything but fluff, but it’s also not a deep […]

Where did it all go wrong?

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

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The title of this book is about misdirection as much as it is about anything else. It’s rife with things that do not actually happen. Pages are spent telling stories about things that might happen, or that we think may have happened – but in reality, so little does occur, until we are left wondering what else WILL happen. The novel centers on the Barnes family. Dickie Barnes and his wife Imelda live with their two children, but their well-to-do lifestyle is quickly about to […]

Nobody knows the Troubles I’ve seen

Cal by Bernard MacLaverty

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‘Would you die for me?’ asks Marcella from Cal after they’ve spent the night together, just the two of them, in a remote farm where Marcella lives with her children and her late husband’s parents. In flashbacks we learn that Cal had been the driver of an execution squad that has killed Marcella’s police officer husband in their doorsteps and gravely injured Marcella’s father-in-law. He hasn’t told Marcella any of this,  of course. The novel tells the story of Cal McCluskey who is a young […]

You can’t spell “heart” without “art,” man!

The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose

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The Museum of Modern Love centers around Marina Abramović’s real-life performance art piece “The Artist is Present” (2009). In 2009, Abramović spent more than 700 hours sitting across a table from strangers, one at a time, at the Museum of Modern Art. She sat for three months and truly looked at each person across from her. And vice versa. For many it was a profound experience. Yet it was a public thing – museum guests could file in and watch these intimate moments. To me, […]

It is faith wrapped in the cloak of science. Contact is as vague and obscure as communion with the saints or the coming of the Messiah.

Solaris by Stanisław Lem

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You are doing all you can to stay human in an inhuman situation. Noble it may be, but it isn’t going to get you anywhere. And I’m not so sure about it being noble – not if it’s idiotic at the same time. ― Stanisław Lem, Solaris It’s what we wanted: contact with another civilization. We have it, this contact! Our own monstrous ugliness, our own buffoonery and shame, magnified as if it was under a microscope! ― Stanisław Lem, Solaris Kelvin is finally on […]

First Book of the Year – A Book About Books

The Book That Wouldn’t Burn by Mark Lawrence

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This is a late start for me this year—I have had a very busy couple of months. Hopefully things smooth out a bit! Lucky me, Mark Lawrence knocks it out of the park again. The man can write some serious engaging blends of fantasy and science fiction. With The Book That Wouldn’t Burn—the first book of his new trilogy—we have a love letter to stories, libraries and nostalgia.  Unlike a number of his previous trilogies (yes, the man is a prolific writer) The Book That […]



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