Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

An unexamined past might come back to bite you on the ass. Literally

Lone Women: A Novel by Victor LaValle

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This short novel is a fascinating combination of history and horror, where history often is the horror. Lone Women is set in a remote homesteading community in Montana in 1915. This sparsely settled country promises adventure, new beginnings, and opportunity for anyone who is willing to take on the hard work of making a life there. Even single women and minorities can have a go. But while this is supposed to be a land of opportunity where neighbors help one another out of necessity if […]

What Happens When the Past is Forgotten

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

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The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro My rating: 4 of 5 stars I chose this for the CBR15 Passport Challenge in the “Travel Your Bookshelf” category. The first time I read Buried Giant, it was going to be a 3 star rating the ending saved it for me. That moment on the shore with Axl and Beatrice gets me in the feels. It’s such sharp, intense writing that leaves a strong impression on a reader. That deserves recognition. Originally, I thought the plot didn’t have much […]

Mothers, sisters, and daughters

The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls: A Novel by Anissa Gray

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TW: Grief, abusive relationships, eating disorders The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls is an outstanding novel that deals with very difficult, triggering topics: parental loss/grief, abusive relationships and eating disorders. The narration is shared by the three adult Cochran sisters over the period of about a month. During that time, the reader witnesses a family spiraling downward but fighting to stay together in the face of powerfully destructive forces.  The novel opens with Althea, the eldest Cochran sister, in jail for committing fraud. […]

That’s a lotta corpses, bro

A Man Named Doll by Jonathan Ames

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I liked the other Jonathan Ames books I’ve read, and learned ten seconds ago that he’s the creator of Bored to Death, which, for anyone who doesn’t know, is a show on HBO Max (which I haven’t seen, but which multiple people have told me I’d like). Anyway. A guy named Happy Doll – for real, his parents named him that…seriously? a little much right off the bat – is an ex-cop who’s now a fairly unsuccessful, i.e., not busy,  private detective. A friend comes […]

A brief history of the Soviet Union and an homage to Casablanca

A Gentleman in Moscow: A Novel by Amor Towles

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There’s a lot to love about this novel: the writing, the characters, the author’s knowledge of Russian history and literature. The premise behind the novel may seem a bit fantastical, but somehow Amor Towles makes me believe it and want it to be true. In 1922, fictional Count Alexander Rostov was brought before a Revolutionary court and found guilty of being an enemy of the people. Given his class, he might have been executed, but in 1913 Rostov had written poetry sympathetic to revolutionary ideals, […]

But Do Say Something of the Cat

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

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To Say Nothing of the Dog wasn’t sitting on my shelf at home, but was tucked away in a used book store in Loreto, Mexico. I had seen the book title years ago, once confusing it with Let’s Not go to the Dogs Tonight (these books have nothing in common other than Dog in the title) and for a few pesos was willing to give it a go.  The story is intentionally silly, the Coventry Cathedral is being rebuilt in Oxford in the future. The […]



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