Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Viscerally terrifying, but maybe a little too clean?

The Hollow Places by T Kingfisher

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Kara is reeling from an out-of-the-blue divorce from her husband when her Uncle Earl calls to offer her his spare room. Sure, the room is back in her home state of North Carolina. And sure, the room is in the back of Uncle Earl’s “curio museum,” featuring such exhibits as a “genuine” Fiji Mermaid and an uncomfortable number of taxidermied animals. But when you’re a freelance graphic designer with a small client base, sometimes you have to make do. So Kara moves to the Wonder […]

I touched madness in my youth, and it has stayed with me

At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft

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At his worst, HP Lovecraft was a racist Anglophile who droned with an incessantly archaic and enigmatical prose that was shifted towards the purple. His characters could be bland and forgettable, and his plots often served no further purpose than presenting an unknowable horror to destroy the minds of these lifeless homuncular denizens of the Lovecraftian realm. I don’t read a lot of HP Lovecraft. But at his best, he can pull you into a dark and unpleasant reality, barely glimpsed beyond the horizon. A […]

Messin’ with Squatch

Devolution by Max Brooks

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I loved World War Z. While the movie was fine, it was not the book that I read and loved. This is a much darker, more horror version that focuses a grisly Bigfoot massacre in Washington state. The audiobook is read by an outstanding cast led by Judy Greer as the protagonist. It follows the same style as World War Z in that it is a collection of journal entries interspersed with news stories and interviews. The main difference between this book and WWZ is […]

There’s Someone Inside Your House

There's Someone Inside Your House by Stephanie Perkins

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I continued my October Spoopy Reads with There’s Someone Inside Your House. What I will say about these horror books is that I really wish there were more of a supernatural element to them, because it’s just normal people murdering and it’s kind of a bummer. Serial killers really ruin my vibe. It seems so innocent, an object in a place you didn’t expect, an open door that you swore was closed, some mysterious footprints…but it could mean a killer is in the house. In […]

Clown in a Cornfield…who will he kill?

Clown in a Cornfield by Adam Cesare

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Kettle Springs, Minnesota seems like your average Midwest town. It’s very rural, surrounded by a lot of corn fields and farms. The town is small and dying after the local corn syrup factory, Baypen, closed its doors. A lot of residents blame the problems on one thing: teenagers. These kids these days are always filming crazy pranks on their phones, disrespecting elders and traditions, commiting arson (Okay, that one actually is bad). Certain members of the community have had enough, but they came up with […]

You learn your lessons and stay vigilant, or you die

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

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4.5 stars Official book description: A Deadly Education is set at Scholomance, a school for the magically gifted where failure means certain death (for real) — until one girl, El, begins to unlock its many secrets. There are no teachers, no holidays, and no friendships, save strategic ones. Survival is more important than any letter grade, for the school won’t allow its students to leave until they graduate… or die!    The rules are deceptively simple: Don’t walk the halls alone. And beware of the […]



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