Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

One day your country is yours, and the next it isn’t.

Swimming in the Dark by Tomasz Jedrowski

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No matter what happens in the world, however brutal or dystopian a thing, not all is lost if there are people out there risking themselves to document it. Little sparks cause fires, too.” ― Tomasz Jedrowski, Swimming in the Dark The odds had been stacked against us from the start: we had no manual, no one to show us the way. Not one example of a happy couple made up of boys. How were we supposed to know what to do? Did we even believe […]

How much of yourself you have to leave behind in order to look like everyone else

Lie With Me by Philippe Besson

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I’m in this state of one-way desire. I feel this desire swarming in my belly and running up my spine. But I have to constantly contain and compress it so that it doesn’t betray me in front of others. Because I’ve already understood that desire is visible. ― Philippe Besson, Lie With Me I’m guessing that there was probably no bolt of lightning, just a warm night full of wine and fluttering moths and the feeling that nothing is really important and everything is possible. […]

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 […]



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