Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Lights Go Down

Hairspray and Switchblades by V. Castro

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Read as part of CBR15Bingo: Bodies, bodies. The book features a commentary about bodies, especially with regards to shapeshifting.  Shapeshifting is a popular trope in horror. It has its origins in Greco-Roman mythology (thanks Wikipedia!) but there are versions of it in a lot of other cultures. In contemporary horror, I’ve seen in featured several times in Latinx novels. It’s centered in this one. Shapeshifting is also sometimes used to tell a broader story about transformation. Maya, the central character here, is a stripper, as well […]

Drag Queens and Dinosaurs have bellies

B Is for Bellies by Rennie Dyball

Parker’s Place by Russ Willms

Big Wig by Jonathan Hillman

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I was going to use B Is for Bellies by Rennie Dyball as my Bingo Bodies but found another one instead. Therefore, I just decided to add this to a review of two other books about being yourself. Starting with a bunch of bellies (well, we have A first as B is for Bellies is an alphabet book)  we have a self explanatory picture book. This book is about big bellies, small bellies, black and brown, and white and purple bellies (okay maybe not purple). […]

The North Becomes Her

Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq

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Tanya Tagaq is an Inuit artist from Canada’s Arctic. She’s best known as a musician for her albums/ performances of throat singing, where she takes traditional Inuit throat singing and makes it her own; she has been nominated and won a number of Canadian music awards. In addition to music, Tagaq writes and her first work, Split Tooth, was published several years ago. It was long listed for the Giller Prize (Canada’s best known literary award) and for an Amazon best first novel award. Split […]

All the good stuff that wasn’t in your history books

Mobituaries: Great Lives Worth Reliving by Mo Rocca and Jonathan Greenberg

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Cbr14bingo Bodies – Bingo Mobituaries is a fascinating, eminently readable collection of humorist Mo Rocca’s obituaries for people and phenomena that didn’t get the attention they deserved at their passing. It’s the kind of book you can just pick up, open at random and immediately be drawn in. Certainly, some of the subjects of Mobituaries are people you have heard of (Audrey Hepburn, Herbert Hoover) but Mo Rocca will reveal things about them that might not have been featured in a traditional obituary or that […]

Happy Birthday Nona

Nona the Ninth (The Locked Tomb Series) by Tamsyn Muir

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*Looks around sneakily*  Mild spoilers for the series in the review, more pressing ones have had the whiteout treatment. Yeah, split me Tipex.   Oh look, it’s a surprise book! When I first picked up Gideon the Ninth a few years back, it was advertised as being part one of a trilogy. And when Harrow The Ninth was released, we were all assured it was two down and one to go. But then just over a year ago, there was the announcement that we were […]

Bodies? Bodies!

Hidden Bodies by Caroline Kepnes

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Read this as part of CBR14 Bingo: Bodies. Because it has “bodies” in the title and involves a lot of bodies, some alive, some dead.  You was by far one of the best books I read this year. Which surprised me given that I don’t care for books about serial killers; finding them monotonous and often gratuitously violent. Everyone is trying to rip off Hannibal Lecter these days (and has been for the last thirty years). But Caroline Kepnes has crafted a you-niquely (see what I did there? […]



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