Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Another Airport Transit Read

Sleep Donation: A Novella by Karen Russell

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This is another book gifted to me by andtheIToldYouSos last year. And this also turned out to be a great little novella to slip into my handbag for those times I was transiting through airports—this time to Indianapolis. Sleep deprivation is a brutal thing; unfortunately in the last few months, I’ve experienced a good deal of that. However, in Sleep Donation,  loss of sleep has become the new pandemic. In its most extreme form, it kills. However, there is a therapy that has been developed […]

Memorable but depressing

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

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I got married last year in August, but when it came to our first wedding anniversary, my husband and I weren’t exactly sure how to celebrate. When I saw that the first anniversary was paper, it occurred to me that we could read a book together! After all, some of our first discussions were about books. We went on a big trip to Florida this year, so we decided to get a book about Florida. I really like this new tradition of ours, and we’re […]

Not What I Was Expecting? Maybe?

St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves: Stories by Karen Russell

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I absolutely loved Karen Russell’s Vampires in the Lemon Grove short story collection, but was really disappointed in Swamplandia!, so when I saw she had another short story collection, I was so excited to read more of her short works. St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves was….not what I was expecting? Granted, Vampires was published in 2013, and St. Lucy’s is her first collection, published in 2006, so I may just be running into my usual issue of having read an author in reverse. But where a […]

These were 100% cover reads, but they (mostly) ended up being great!

The Tiger Came to the Mountains (The Trespass Collection, #1) by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Wildlife (The Trespass Collection, #2) by Jeff VanderMeer

The Backbone of the World (The Trespass Collection, #3) by Stephen Graham Jones

Stag (The Trespass Collection, #4) by Karen Russell

A Righteous Man (The Trespass Collection, #5) by Tochi Onyebuchi

Bloody Summer (The Trespass Collection, #6) by Carmen Maria Machado

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As mentioned in this post’s title, I saw these covers and immediately went OOOOH. Click click click. Free? Okay! Also, the idea of various genres of story that deal with nature and wildlife clashing with humans appeals to me. I did four of them by audio, and all four narrators were excellent (even for the one I two-starred), and two by Kindle. If you have Prime, they are free for you. Some of them really surprised me! “Wildlife,” by Jeff VanderMeer — 2 STARS This […]

“It’s not unlike filtration, a move that blatant, deliberate. “

Sleep Donation by Karen Russell

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In the near-future, we lucky Americans are eyeball-deep in a new terror: we can’t sleep. Every day, thousands more become unable to reach REM. They die after days of restlessness. The only thing that can help? Donations of sleep from “healthy” dreamers. Not unlike a blood drive, people like Trish Edgewater are cold-calling sleepers, begging them to give some of their life to the lifeless. Etiquette is a powerful programming, however, and easily exploitable. I sneeze. He sneezes back language at me, reflexive generosity: “Bless […]

The Swamp Will Eat You

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

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Since reading Russell’s short story collection, I’ve had her novel on my to-read. As always, bingo is a great time to knock a bunch of books off the TBR pile, so I finally made space for Swamplandia!. Sadly, I was underwhelmed. Russell’s writing is beautiful and there’s a ton of descriptive gems throughout the story, but plot wise, this book felt all over the place. Swamplandia! is an alligator themed adventure park run by the Bigtree family where they wrestle alligators and do stunts above the gator […]



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