Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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“Are you in a cult?”

Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell

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Well, I might be! Really, I’m inundated with cultish language- much like most of you are as well! The above question, posited by our own CBR gurus and shared across social media, was attached to an excellent review by faintingviolet. Her review kindled a blaze with other CBR readers- myself included! Our Goodreads walls are packed with update-after-update barrages of people frantically ripping through this read! I am very much looking forward to the Cultish flood headed our way. Now- back to the question. Am I […]

Fanning Out

Fan Club by Erin Mayer

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This is a book that I enjoyed in stretches but mostly left me frustrated. I think I have a thing for millennial women writing social/patriarchal mystery/thrillers set in New York City. Tara Isabelle Burton. Andrea Baartz. I tend to like these books more than others do. It’s not my favorite genre but it’s one I apparently enjoy. This book can be slotted into it. It works as a deconstruction and examination of the cultish nature of fandom. The nameless protagonist* gets drawn into this clique […]

lovely, stinking, brutal, sunburned, magical, and filthy.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

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Jacob de Zoet is a young man of meager means. He has hitched his hopes to the Dust East India Company- he’ll spend several trading seasons on Dejima- about as far away from home and his fiancée as he can physically be. What is Dejima? Why, I’m glad you asked! The year is 1799, and Japan is very strict in regards to foreign interference and influence. Following disasters interactions with the Spanish and Portuguese decades earlier, Japan is a closed empire. Dejima, a man-made island […]

When you’ve been told your whole life who and what to believe, who can you ultimately trust?

The Liar's Daughter by Megan Cooley Peterson

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Piper experiences life Before and After her life in The Community, a religious cult secluded somewhere in Northern California. Before, in The Community, Piper is happy. She has her brothers and sisters; she has a lake and a garden where all of their fresh vegetables are grown for the family. She has her Aunties, stern caregivers who take care of Piper and all of her younger siblings. Her Mother and Father do not live with Piper and her siblings but rather take care of everything […]

things that go “scoff” in the night

Bunny by Mona Awad

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This book was praised to high-heavens, thus giving me high hopes. It is all over “best of” lists, there are tons of snarky little quips in write-ups, and the paperback features pull-quotes from Margaret Atwood and Karen Russell. I was ready to be ruined by this book… but. …it fell flat, as so many pumped-up things often do. Samantha, an unreliable narrator if ever there was one, is a post-grad MFA fellow at Warren College, a told-but-not-shown sPoOoOoKy college somewhere in New England. There’s some […]

It’s all about the girls

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On the surface, The Girls, by Emma Cline, appears to be about a Manson-like figure in Northern California in the 1960s. The leader of a small, communal living group, Russell taught his small group of followers “to discover a path to truth, how to free their real selves from where it was coiled inside them.” The group consists mostly of women, and mostly of young women, who felt that being around Russell was “like a natural high… Like the sun or something. That big and […]



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