Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The burden and the gift of knowing one’s history

The Deep by Rivers Solomon, Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, Jonathan Snipes

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The Deep is a novel inspired by a song by the rappers known as clipping  (Diggs, Hutson and Snipes). It is the story of Yetu, a 34-year-old wajinru (mer-person) who serves as her people’s historian, and of the burden that this vocation entails. It is also the story of the enslaved people of the Americas and of the trauma handed down through generations. The sea-dwelling people known as wajinru were born from a traumatic experience: their foremothers were land-dwelling women who had been enslaved and […]

The Sun Also Rises

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

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The second in my Literature with a Capital L series, The Sun Also Rises is another Hemingway, this time featuring am early-thirties group of friends trundling around Europe having adventures consisting primarily of fishing, sex, and bull-fighting. I’m not going to rehash everything I said in my previous post, but my problem with Hemingway boils down to the fact that the Wikipedia plot summary for this book, aka what should be the most succinct summary you can find, begins with “on the surface,” suggesting that […]

Orochi Vol. 3

Orochi Vol. 3 by Kazuo Umezu

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I started reading Kazuo Umezu because Junji Ito is one of my favorite authors. Drifting Classroom was the best starting point because it was weird and misery porn and bloody (and poopy), but at least it has a strong narrative to follow. Orochi is a lot weirder and harder to recommend. In Orochi, the titular character is a strange woman who travels the world with strange powers. The powers are poorly defined. She can sort of touch someone with the tip of her finger and […]

Watching through windows you’re wondering if I’m okay

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

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“And you look like a protagonist…You look like the person who wins in the end” ― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park “What if Park realized that all the things he thought were so mysterious and intriguing about her were actually just … bleak?” ― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park I picked up this book as I read somewhere that it parallels some plot points with Normal People. I personally did not find many parallels but the number of mentions of this book on this site […]

More Women Getting Justice

Silenced by Ann Claycomb

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I am struggling to write this review. This book was good and I enjoyed it and I absolutely recommend it. Let’s just put that upfront. A solid almost four-star read. Like, a 3.85. Really. So why do I want to complain about it? I guess it’s because it is another entry in my new favorite subgenre – post-#metoo feminist fiction with a magical realism or fairy tale bent – but it just isn’t quite as excellent as other books I’ve read recently. It mostly suffers […]

Timeline

Timeline by Michael Crichton

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Michael Crichton used to be my favorite author. Then I read State of Fear. That’s not really an exaggeration, State of Fear is so bad it changed my whole opinion on the author. It’s a breathless screed against climate science wrapped in the barest wrapper of a story. It’s one of those “why even did you write this” things that doesn’t feel at all out of place in 2023, the age of Matt Walsh’s What is a Woman and Elon Musk demanding a renowned vaccine […]



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