Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Smashing the patriarchy is a brutal business

The Poet Empress: A Novel by Shen Tao

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I picked up this novel based on Narfna’s recommendation, and I’m glad I did. This is an intense fantasy novel about power, magic, literacy and women. And as Narfna says, it is NOT romantasy, no matter how it might be marketed. This is Shen Tao’s debut novel, and she warns readers that it contains violence, sexual abuse, and torture, and some of this involves children. It can be a lot but if you can handle it, it’s worth the ride. The Poet Empress is set […]

“Good God, sometimes it felt like all of society was complicit in trying to make life harder for women.”

The Proposal by Jasmine Guillory

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3.5 stars Nowhere Book Bingo 26: BIPOC rep by a BIPOC author Reading Rainbow – Orange cover Nikole “Nik” Paterson is bored and uncomfortable at a baseball game with her handsome, if rather self-centred, actor boyfriend, and his bros. She is absolutely blindsided when he surprises her with a public proposal, via the scoreboard, and to add insult to injury, he didn’t even spell her name correctly. Nik is mortified, her boyfriend is insulted by her rejection, and things are about to take a nasty […]

Do We Ever Really Know Our Parents?

The Nights are Quiet in Tehran by Shida Bazyar

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It sometimes feels likes a writer has used their work of fiction as a cathartic exorcism of their demons. The Nights are Quiet in Tehran feels like Shida Bazyar is laying bare parts of her own upbringing as the child of political refugees from Iran living in Germany. This gives the book a warmer, more personal touch than might have been achieved by another.   This book plays with form, switching 4 times between time periods and narrators as we follow the lives of Behzad, […]

When a great story is adapted into a great movie, x2

Different Seasons by Stephen King

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At least 30 years ago I read The Shining and really enjoyed it, so I’m not sure why I never picked up another book by Stephen King. Probably it’s because I’m not a huge horror fan, although Shirley Jackson’s Haunting of Hill House started to change my mind about that. Recently, a friend of mine convinced me that I should try Different Seasons, and knowing that it contained the novella that was the basis for The Shawshank Redemption, I thought, “Yes! Excellent idea!” It’s always […]

We, Ourselves, and Us

Namesake by N. S. Nuseibeh

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It’s sometimes a strange feeling to live overseas. No matter how settled you feel, how well you feel you’ve gotten under the skin of where you are, there are always voices whispering how you’re not of that place. These whispers talk of ancestral roots and ideas of home that Nuseibeh constructs into a series of essays linking to the fierce Islamic warrior, Nusaybah.   Nuseibeh explores her own identity as much as the near mythical figure of Nusaybah.  Navigating multiple identities, a woman, a secular […]

Grief, Guilt, & 21 Days at Sea

The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje

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Weaving fragments of timelines is always a risky move for a writer. Moving backwards and forwards through the protagonist’s life can be confusing and gimmicky, taking a skilled story-teller to avoid us asking if it would be a better plot if it were linear. With Michael Ondaatje, we’re in such talented hands.  The Cat’s Table weaves a slow, reflective tale of a group of friends, migrants from Sri Lanka to Britain and from there the wider world. Ondaatje uses the same spatial anchor to keep […]



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