Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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The most effective collection of short stories I have ever read

The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enriquez

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The Dangers of Smoking in Bed is a collection of short stories by Mariana Enriquez. The stories are a mix of magical realism and outright horror. An Argentine writer, many stories take place in Argentina but a fair few also take place in Barcelona, Spain. Enriquez embues each story with a richness of their environment that make each story feel real and possible, despite the more horrific, fantastical elements. Most collections of shorts stories that I have read in my life are mostly fine. They […]

His Holiness Pope Francis I stirs things up….

Francis The People's Pope by Ted Ral

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When I learned we had a Pope Francis my first thought was, “We have a Pope FRANKIE???” (And I mean no disrespect, truly I only have love here.) He caught my eye. Now I was curious who this man was. What was the hub-bub about? He was the fifth Pope I was alive for but only the second I was “aware of” (I knew of Pope John Paul II, as I remember the assassination attempt, but I was still a kid and not into politics). […]

I’ll be watching you…

Kentukis by Samanta Schweblin

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More than a conventional novel, Kentukis is a collection of glimpses into people’s lives as they deal with the new must have gadgets that have become a worldwide obsession. These gadgets are known as Kentukis, and what they do is establish a connection between the person who owns the Kentuki (a sort of even creepier Furby) and the person who is the Kentuki, that is, the person who bought a connection to look into the life of the person who owns the Kentuki through the […]

The girl with kaleidoscope eyes

Pájaros en la boca y otros cuentos (Mouthful of Birds: Stories) by Samanta Schweblin

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Samanta Schweblin. This is a name I have been hearing for years but for some reason I had never read any of her books before this past December. After three books, she is definitely one of my favorite writers. Well, after one book, really. As soon as I finished her story collection “Siete casas vacías” I knew I was in literary love. For me, Schweblin is Lucy in the Sky with a touch of Kafka. Her stories are surreal and whimsical but with a dangerous […]

Dig a Little Deeper, Read a Little Harder

August by Romina Paula, Jennifer Croft (translator)

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For the first time in three years I am giving up on the Read Harder Challenge. Changing jobs in November (yay!) and the coming holiday bonanza has cut more severely than I anticipated into my reading time. I have knocked my review goal down to 75 from 78 and jettisoned four books from my to read list that would have completed this year’s challenge. (Expect to see some of them next year.) The book I didn’t purge was this one, August. One of the challenges […]



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