Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Walter Benjamin (1)

Illuminations: Essays and Reflections by Walter Benjamin

by Leave a Comment

“I am unpacking my library. Yes, I am. The books are not yet on the shelves, not yet touched by the mild boredom of order. I cannot march up and down their ranks to pass them in review before a friendly audience. You need not fear any of that. In­stead, I must ask you to join me in the disorder of crates that have been wrenched open, the air saturated with the dust of wood, the floor covered with torn paper, to join me among […]

Dueling novels

Scary Monsters by Michelle de Kretser

by Leave a Comment

Michelle de Krester gives the reader a (granted, limited) choice in this duology packaged as a single book – you can read these stories, each essentially a novel in itself, in whichever order you prefer. One is called “Lili”, and set in the early 1980s. The other is called “Lyle” and set in the near future. The stories are, of course, siblings but there’s not a specific through-line. They are connected without really connecting. Both stories are about Australians who had emigrated from nearby Asian […]

Not My Flavor

The Flanders Road by Claude Simon

by Leave a Comment

CBR15Passport Flanders OK, let me just put this out there. Unconstructed prose is not my jam. Page after page with no structure, no punctuation, no paragraphs, OK, no. Looking at you James Joyce. Dubliners? Love. Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man? Well OK. Finnigan’s Wake? OK, now we having issues. Ulysses? Oooohhh no. So I feel guilty about not giving this a better rating because it is not my cup of tea, but I suspect it is well written. Generally when I give […]

Jersey Girl

Death of a Dancing Queen by Kimberly G. Giarratano

by Leave a Comment

CW: This book has a tragic trans angle. I won’t spoil how and while I think the writer handled it well enough, it still touches on some worn tropes that could be hard for some. Please be warned. They say that if you like to write, write a book you’d want to read. I had no hand in writing Death of a Dancing Queen, obviously, but by-and-large this is a book I’d want to write: interesting PI character, well-described setting, villains of both the regular- and underworlds respectively. […]

Allan Gurganus (1)

Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All by Allan Gurganus

by Leave a Comment

“Died on me finally. He had to.” Did everyone in America watch the made for tv movie of this book in 1994 starring Cicely Tyson, Diane Lane, Anne Bancroft, and Donald Sutherland, or was it just our family? We watched it and it was one of those big family moment things, even though, a) we probably shouldn’t have (probably not really enough context for 12 year old me, and b) why in the world were we so enthralled by it? The book is also enthralling […]

What Is to Come Has Already Been Decided

The Angel Maker by Alex North

by Leave a Comment

Katie and her brother Chris have had a strained relationship ever since the brutal attack on Chris that changed their lives forever. Decades later, it might be too late to fix things when Chris goes missing. In this book, we are introduced to two separate mysteries that inevitably wind together – the disappearance of Chris Shaw, and the murder of Alan Hobbs – and the way that they come together made me exercise my brain and sometimes stretched my incredulity. I would hesitate to call […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo