Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Mexican Gothic!

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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I love gothic novels. I love gothic films. I love gothic stories, in general. And I loved this one. I’ve never read a gothic novel that takes place outside of Europe, unless they’re on the East Coast of the U.S. And to set one in Mexico was such a great choice. Though, the menacing family and house are purely English and very familiarly gloomy. Mexican Gothic follows Noemí Taboada as she travels from her exciting life as a beloved socialite in Mexico City to a […]

Manga and Me

Asadora! V01 by Naoki Urasawa

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I started the book Asadora! V01 thinking there was going to be some big excitement on every page (meaning our main character would be a Pippi Longstocking type of gal getting in and out of mischief with their friends). Instead, Naoki Urasawa gives us one very large, devastating moment, and the rest of the book is what we do to survive. We try and survive every day (Asa is one of 12 children), what we do to save face (a side story of a boy […]

Slow build up to a crazy bananapants ending

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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Mexican Gothic is the story of Noemí Taboada, a 22 year old socialite in 1950s Mexico City. Noemí’s life is filled with parties, shopping, concerts, and a rotating cast of beaus. Despite having a sharp mind, no one except her father looks past her beautiful face. Noemí’s cousin Catalina married an English man named Virgil Doyle and moved to his family’s estate in the mountains the previous year. Catalina has sent Noemí’s father a disturbing letter claiming her husband is trying to poison her and […]

Theater During the Red Scare

The Chelsea Girls by Fiona Davis

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I think it was either jomidi’s review of this novel specifically or Caitlin D’s more general review of Fiona Davis’s novels but I ended up downloading The Chelsea Girls a while back.  By the time I started reading it, I didn’t quite remember what the overall story line was beyond being set in New York during the mid-20th century and involving female friendships.  I was very pleasantly surprised when I realized this wasn’t simply a story about young women navigating life in a big city […]

Free Spirit Holly Golightly, Forever a Cipher

Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote

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Breakfast at Tiffany’s the book shares a lot of the same traits as Breakfast at Tiffany’s the film: charming in places, predictable in others, with some questionable and unnecessary ethnic and racist slurs. Truman Capote wrote it in 1958, but the story is set in 1943 as a young, unnamed writer (Capote’s stand-in) moves into a brownstone on the upper east side of Manhattan. He soon encounters his 19 year-old enigmatic neighbor, Holly Golightly. She proceeds to charm and repel him at intervals, while remaining […]

She’ll Take Manhattan

Dope by Sara Gran

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Dope is such a solid crime novel that it makes me want to immediately clear my TBR pile and read Sara Gran’s entire catalogue. The problem with that is I’ve tried to read Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead so many times and have never been able to get into it. I just can’t connect with the inner monologue of the titular character. Which sucks because it’s doubtless that Sara Gran is a talented writer. I picked this one up when I saw it on a […]



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