Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Wanting to go back down the rabbit hole

Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire

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It’s official: Seanan McGuire is my new favorite. After really enjoying Sparrow Road and then realizing I’d have to wait a near-eternity (or maybe it just seems like it) to get the sequel from the library, I found on the shelves Every Heart A Doorway, first in another series (Wayward Children) by the same author. The basic premise is intriguing: what happens to the people who find their way into fairy tale worlds (like Alice in Wonderland etc) but then end up back in their […]

The Dead aren’t the only ones walking

Daybreak by Brian Ralph

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Had I read Daybreak by Brain Ralph as a teen; I do not think I would have been sophisticated enough to understand it. I am honestly not sure I am sophisticated enough as one well into my adult years to have read this. But read it I did. While it only took me a night to fly through this book, I know I missed a lot. A second or even third reading is not a bad idea. The pacing is as odd as the set […]

True and terrifying

Field Notes from a Catastrophe by Elizabeth Kolbert

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This non-fiction account of the myriad causes, symptoms and impacts of global warming is the scariest thing I have read in years. Kolbert takes us from Alaska to Antarctica to illustrate the changes that humanity has wrought, and gives us glimpses into the staggering government inaction (George W. Bush) to small-scale hopes (Germany’s power grid).  In each chapter, Kolbert develops an increasingly claustrophobic picture of just how screwed we are, and how we need to alter course immediately.  As scary as the information that Kolbert […]

Murder Your Darlings

Bunny by Mona Awad

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This one was recommended to me by a friend of mine and I’m glad I gave it a shot. While it’s not my normal thing, Mona Awad’s prose is crisp and she tells a good story. The whole thing is a horror/satire work on the nature of grad school work and the feeling of belonging or not belonging to a particular clique. I think the horror bits work better than the satire ones. When Awad shifts into situations of hyperrealism and dream states, she describes […]

Couldn’t put it down, but had to cuz SCARY, but then had to pick it back up again.

Severance by Ling Ma

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I love post-apocalyptic literature. Don’t know why, haven’t pulled at that thread, but it is my jaaam. My bread and butter. And other sandwich metaphors. So, I was predisposed to like this (cuz it’s my favorite genre) but also NOT like it, if it wasn’t well done. And it was so so well done. The day after I finished it, I bought it for someone else to read because I need them to read it so I can talk about it. I can’t stop thinking […]

Unfortunately this Imaginary Friend just wouldn’t go away

Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky

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Christopher and his single-mother are starting over in a town. Christopher must savE the worlD. He’ll need all thE helP he Can geT. FrOm hiS friendS. From his moM. And from his new imaginarY frienD. The Nice Man. Over 900 pages of this book were written like that: short, declarative sentences; fragments; strange, unnecessary capitalization; breaks in the sentence and paragraph. It’s all very Chbosky. At first, the style choices work. The breaks and short sentences create a tone and a mood that leave the […]



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