Cannonball Read 12

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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American Ghost Stories

Battleborn by Claire Vaye Watkins

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Claire Vaye Watkins has an infamous father. I don’t point this out in a salacious “looky here” way, but this father looms large over the first story in this collection. Her father is Tex Watson, yes, that Tex Watson. Murderer. Manson Family member. Currently and indefinitely imprisoned Tex Watson who married a prison pen pal and fathered four children while in jail. Claire wrests the reins from her father, her family, and her history to tell her own story- and it’s a doozy. All of […]

I would probably have liked this better if the protagonist was the sister

The Book of Speculation by Erika Swyler

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Official book description: Simon Watson, a young librarian, lives alone in a house that is slowly crumbling toward the Long Island Sound. His parents are long dead. His mother, a circus mermaid who made her living by holding her breath, drowned in the very water his house overlooks. His younger sister, Enola, ran off six years ago and now reads tarot cards for a traveling carnival. One June day, an old book arrives on Simon’s doorstep, sent by an antiquarian bookseller who purchased it on […]

“If you remember me, I don’t care if everyone else forgets.”

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Kafka on the Shore is a strange book, even by Murakami standards. This is my second reading but sadly I don’t remember what I thought about it the fist time I read it 12 years ago because back then I didn’t take notes or write reviews. All I know is that I thought it was a four-star book. Haruki Murakami has been one of my favorite writers ever since I “discovered” him almost 17 years ago. I read a review of The Elephant Vanishes in […]

“I’ll Get You, My Pretty!” ~ Boy, Snow, Bird

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This highly acclaimed new novel by Helen Oyeyemi has been called a modern retake on the fairy tale of Snow White. In fact, it is a fairy tale that deals with tropes common to many fairy tales: wicked stepmothers, abandonment, evil forces that prey on innocent young girls, curses. But the overriding theme is female beauty, particularly society’s predilection for whiteness. We imagine beauty as powerful and empowering to those who possess it, but it frequently engenders fear and malevolence in others, resulting in endangerment […]



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