Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Be Gay Do Crime

Be Gay Do Crime: Sixteen Stories of Queer Chaos by Molly Llewellyn (editor), Kristel Buckley (editor)

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Once again, I’m a sucker for a good title, and Be Gay Do Crime got me immediately. It’s a short story collection edited by Molly Llewellyn and Kristel Buckley, and I went in assuming that it’d be a series of riots. The name evokes the proud history of queer militancy to me — the anti-normative ethos of “not gay as in happy but queer as in fuck you.” That’s mostly not it. Across the 16 stories collected here, there are many flavors of queerness (largely […]

More Women Getting Justice

Silenced by Ann Claycomb

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I am struggling to write this review. This book was good and I enjoyed it and I absolutely recommend it. Let’s just put that upfront. A solid almost four-star read. Like, a 3.85. Really. So why do I want to complain about it? I guess it’s because it is another entry in my new favorite subgenre – post-#metoo feminist fiction with a magical realism or fairy tale bent – but it just isn’t quite as excellent as other books I’ve read recently. It mostly suffers […]

All the Rage

When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill

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I’ve been sitting here staring at a blank screen, trying desperately to figure out the words to convey the depth and urgency of my love for this book. Let’s start with: if I have anything to be grateful to the former occupier of the White House for, it is the uptick in feminist rage literature. I suppose credit where credit is due. Because we’ve been mad, I’ve been angry my whole damn life, but it’s just now I’m finding books that mirror my own simmering […]

Not every story leaves the teller unharmed

A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes

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“The bards all sing of the bravery of the heroes and the greatness of your deeds: it is one of the few elements on which they all agree. But no one sings of the courage required by those of us who were left behind.” ― Natalie Haynes, A Thousand Ships The more I read, the more I write, and the more I consume all forms of storytelling from films, to TV, to poetry, the more I realize how unfamiliar I am with the bases for […]

“There is more than one kind of freedom. . . . Freedom to and freedom from.”

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

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I’ve had The Handmaid’s Tale on my shelf for many months now, but I’ve been avoiding starting it. I wanted to read it, but I felt like I had to be in a certain (untroubled) emotional state to face it, and that’s been a tall order these past couple of years. I recently braced myself and got down to business. Of course I already knew the premise: In the near-future, after the U.S. government has been overthrown and replaced by a patriarchal, Cristhian theonomy, women […]

A satisfying heroine; not Sherlock Holmes

A Study in Scarlet Women by Sherry Thomas

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CBR12 BINGO: Red A Study in Scarlet Women has been on my radar since last year’s “Classics and Retellings” book club, when a number of Cannonballers reviewed it as an adaptation/retelling of Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous work. I was excited that CBR12 BINGO gave me an excuse to pick it up from my library. My enthusiasm arc for this novel can be visualized as a bell curve: I went from “hmm, ok but. . .,” to “wow, this is great!” back down to “mildly positive” […]



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