Cannonball Read 15

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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My heart is wrapped up in you.

The Serpent King by Jeff Zentner

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“If you’re going to live, you might as well do painful, brave, and beautiful things.” ― Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King While our classmates are getting zongered at the Holiday Inn in Cookeville and getting pregnant, you and I will be playing in the sprinkler and looking up at the stars until your curfew. ― Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King After his father, the magnetic preacher of a full-on “speaking-in-tongues and handling snakes” church is sent to prison, Dillard Early Jr. has the weight of […]

“When you get older, you may never have anyone sing to you personally again, but go all over the world and I bet you can’t find one baby that has never been sung to.”

The Good Times Are Killing Me by Lynda Barry

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Lynda Barry’s other near-perfect YA novel, The Good Times Are Killing Me, marks my completing re-reading her non comics work, as I read and reviewed Cruddy last year. I do think Cruddy is a singular work of genius, but this novel is a close second and one that I find deeply moving and beautiful. It’s a short book, only 131 pages, but Barry manages to pack a lot of emotion and layered, thoughtful commentary on growing up, friendship, systemic societal racism, and the power of […]

“I was the kid with the shackle clamped around his wrist:” King’s Latest Doorstopper

Fairy Tale by Stephen King

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I’ve read almost all of the King oeuvre so was excited to see this at 30% off at Target. He’s known as a master storyteller for a reason, and I sped through this in a few days. Over the last few years he’s been mainly playing around with crime novels and thrillers, so this pastiche/homage to classic fairy tales and America’s foundational genre writers like Burroughs, Lovecraft, and Baum was an interesting change of pace. He’s only really written one other fantasy-type novel (Eyes of […]

Angst!

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater

Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater

The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater

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“It was funny, the Gray Man thought, how humorous she always appeared, how that smile was always just a moment away from her lips. You really didn’t see the sadness or the longing unless you already knew it was there. But that was the trick, wasn’t it? Everyone had their disappointment and their baggage; only, some people carried it in their inside pockets and not on their backs. And here was the other trick: Maura was not faking her happiness. She was both very happy […]

“I think of all the things I dislike in this world, I hate being condescended to the most:” A Lovely Coming of Age YA Novel

Marly the Kid by Susan Beth Pfeffer

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This was a very pleasant surprise — I got this randomly based on a TikTok recommendation, and had no real expectations going in. I thought the plot sounded interesting and I tend to like older YA from the 70s, so figured I’d give it a shot. It turned out to be quite good and I really enjoyed it. Marly is a sophomore in high school whose mother is awful and verbally abusive to her. Her sister already left home and is in Colorado trying to […]

None of us ever find enough kindness in the world, do we?

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

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To understand the world at all, sometimes you could only focus on a tiny bit of it, look very hard at what was close at hand and make it stand in for the whole. When I finish a project or some small, self-assigned goal, one of my rewards is gathering a pile of books from my TBR list, usually used paperbacks. For coming-of-age stories, this one had a ton of reviews and, when I spotted it at a half priced books, I snatched it up. […]



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