Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Revisiting a queer collection from my ’90s youth

Am I Blue by Marion Dane Bauer

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I picked up Am I Blue?, an anthology of “gay and lesbian” stories for young adults right around when it was published in 1994. I was in middle school, which I had entered with a new haircut that earned me a lot of accusations from more ignorant classmates. But I think this was just a coincidence; I don’t remember questioning my sexuality or gender despite those comments. I expect I either picked it up out of curiosity about the gay community, or that my mom […]

California fairy tale dreamin’

The Rose and the Beast by Francesca Lia Block

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The Rose and the Beast by Francesca Lia Block is an early 2000s reimagining of classic fairy tales set in “modern” Los Angeles. Block adapts nine of our most famous European fairy tales, each from the perspective of the young woman at its center. Some are narrated first-person and immediate, some are told in a more fable-esque tone. Each title is just a single word, and while some titles clearly indicate the tale they’re retelling, a couple are vague, which was fun to figure out […]

Are Giants Scarier than Climate Change?

Love in the Time of Global Warming by Francesca Lia Block

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If I made a short list of the books that mattered to me as a teenager in the late 90’s, the Weetzie Bat series by Francesca Lia Block would be at the top. I have vivid memories of finding their brightly colored covers in the teen section of the library and checking them out over and over to read her dreamy, magical stories of life in a fantasy LA. Love in the Time of Global Warming is a much later novel of hers, coming out […]

Amazon Originals Presents, a mixed bag.

Faraway by Various

Hush by Various

If the South Had won the Civil War by MacKinlay Kantor

Lost Children by Francesca Lia Block

Trafik by Rikki Ducornet

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A collection of short stories that are either based on fairy tales (like specific ones) or based on fairy tale elements and tropes. So this makes this collection a two-fer in terms of possible issues. The first i s that modern day retellings of fairy tales are very hit or miss. Sometimes they’re great ala Angela Carter and a few others, and sometimes they’re very weak. And the same thing happens in this collection. And of course in any kind of solicited short story collection […]

I came to this book both too early and too late

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Well, this book ages really, really poorly. Some spoilers below. It reads exactly like the time it was written (1989): “progressive” enough to include, at least superficially, a cast of characters including a same-sex couple and people of color in mixed-race relationships, as well as treatment of the AIDS epidemic and drug abuse that leans more sympathetic than condemning. However, it’s not exactly “woke” enough to avoid stumbling into some major Don’t Do That’s. Weetzie, pixie bohemian darling protagonist, is signified as being creative and […]



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