Cannonball Read 12

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“She wondered, for the thousandth time, who got to decide one tradition was right and another was wrong.”

The Butchers' Blessing by Ruth Gilligan

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What makes a tradition a tradition? How and when do we pass from routine to ritual, and ritual to sacred rite? How do we decide what it kept, what is left behind, and what must be destroyed for the good of the future? Ruth Gilligan knows, but she will not give us any easy answers. Instead, she gives us snapshots; a literal photograph  sets us in motion, but glimpses into the life of “modern Ireland” connect the pieces by stringing one red knot to another. […]

Dracula sucks…but the book doesn’t!

Dracula by Bram Stoker

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Dracula sucks but the book doesn’t. I go through phases of reading classics or otherwise tackling books with reputations of being difficult. Sometimes it’s easy to see why books are classics – they’re timeless and engrossing. A Tale of Two Cities is that way for me. So is Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. Other times the classics feel like archaeological work. The reader is excavating and extrapolating. Dracula felt like work to me, but the reader can definitely appreciate the book’s influence on future work. In particular, […]

Spoooky

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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Counter-intuitively, this Gothic horror novel was an absolute joy to read. My attention span in 2020 is limited at best, but I could not put down Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic. Her main character, the impetuous and steel-spited Mexico City socialite Noemí Taboada, is truly alive. The rural Mexican setting is a delight, and the creepiness level is appropriate for those of us less versed in horror. Noemí Taboada is a Mexico City mover and shaker. She lives in the 1940s-50s era, and has expansive ideas […]

Slow build up to a crazy bananapants ending

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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Mexican Gothic is the story of Noemí Taboada, a 22 year old socialite in 1950s Mexico City. Noemí’s life is filled with parties, shopping, concerts, and a rotating cast of beaus. Despite having a sharp mind, no one except her father looks past her beautiful face. Noemí’s cousin Catalina married an English man named Virgil Doyle and moved to his family’s estate in the mountains the previous year. Catalina has sent Noemí’s father a disturbing letter claiming her husband is trying to poison her and […]

Damn, son. Be sure to hang on to that candelabra, though.

Malicroix by Henri Bosco

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What a wild ride.  Gothic mysticism is the best way to describe it, I guess.  Although I was unfamiliar with the French writer, he had been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times, so there’s that. The book opens in a straightforward way with a pleasant young man being summoned to the estate of his recently deceased great-uncle.  He is dropped off by carriage in a desolate expanse of fields and wetlands where he is met by a taciturn shepherd sent to escort […]



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