Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Fairy Tales: a genre by and for “we the people”

Old Wives' Fairy Tale Book by Angela Carter

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I picked up this fairy tale collection in Tim’s Books, a tiny off-the-path used bookstore in Provincetown, because it had Angela Carter’s name on it, and I’ve been dedicating my book-buying to hoarding collections by the best fairy tale scholars, especially the feminist ones. It has, as you can see, a delightfully dated cover, but its ideas are very radical and timeless. The book is a selection of fairy tales and folktales chosen by Carter (author of the brilliant The Bloody Chamber), highlighting some of the […]

Radicalize your reading through fairy tales

The Castle of Truth and Other Revolutionary Tales by Hermynia Zur Mühlen, Jack Zipes

Smack-Bam, or The Art of Governing Men: Political Fairy Tales of Édouard Laboulaye by Édouard Laboulaye, Jack Zipes

The Dragon Daughter and Other Lin Lan Fairy Tales by Juwen Zhang

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If you ask me “What’s the best thing about fairy tales?” my brain will combust. But in this very moment, I’ll say one of the best things is that there are so many forgotten or “undiscovered” tales to enjoy. In an effort to bring some forgotten folklorists to the forefront, fairy tale scholar Jack Zipes (my nerdiest old man crush) and Princeton University Press came together for a new-ish series called Oddly Modern Fairy Tales. Each volume concentrates on a writer or movement in fairy […]

Napoleonic Europe Weren’t No Fairy Tale

The Wild Girl by Kate Forsyth

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The Wild Girl is a fictionalized narrative of the life-long relationship between Dortchen Wild and the Brothers Grimm.  Kate Forsyth has pieced together her version of events from the actual documents of the Grimms and the Wilds, filling in the blanks with inspiration from the Brothers Grimm collection of fairy tales.  We know that the Wilds and the Grimms were neighbors, that Dortchen was the source for many of the Grimm’s most famous fairy tales, and that she and Wilhelm married, but unconventionally late in their […]

Probably the way I found this book was more interesting to me than the book

Marigold and Rose by Louise Gluck

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Honestly, I am not really sure what I read.  Marigold and Rose by Louise Gluck is not in my usual wheelhouse. First it is an adult book, not a kids book and second, it is a mixture of unusual prose poetry and a regular novel. Go ahead and call me unsophisticated if you wish. I’m good with that. Not every book is meant for everyone and not everyone is meant for every book. I would say that the book has two main layers to it. […]

The Snail, the Pumpkin and the Squash

Stories of the Islands by Clar Angkasa

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Three gorgeously illustrated, feminist-twist folktales, myths, stories are included in Stories of the Islands by Clar Angkasa (Clar pronounced like Clark without the k) based their stories on the ones of their childhood, adding what might not seem at first “girl power” but will become that, to each one. There are some mature themes (the giant wants to eat the girl, the father is abusive to his daughters, a village thinks that a woman who is single with no children is odd and tells her […]

“There is nothing wrong with being a monster.”

The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw

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?????? It’s been weeks now and I still don’t know what to make of this one. A very dark and weird take on The Little Mermaid story, with a cheeky little nod to Hans Christian Andersen even; mostly this was an exercise in imagery and I didn’t connect to the characters, but I can’t deny it has style. The mermaid here was essentially stolen from the sea, forced to marry a prince, had her tongue cut out, and then gave birth to daughters who then […]



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