Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Sure, But Who’s Really the Animal?

Animal by Lisa Taddeo

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Animal, by Lisa Taddeo, is a story about Joan. Joan will tell you herself that she is depraved. She will also remind you that she is a survivor and that she’s been judged not only by what she’s done to others, but by the things that have happened to her. For years, Joan’s rage was dormant, but now, after yet another violent act by a man in her life, her rage is growing. Joan is “hot” and “sexy” but is most flattered when someone simply […]

a collection of poisonous surfaces

Ghost Lover by Lisa Taddeo

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CBR Bingo Square: Snake I don’t read a lot of short stories these days except for work, so when the description of Lisa Taddeo’s Ghost Lover piqued my interest, I went ahead and put a library hold on it. I felt optimistic: I’d liked both Carmen Maria Machado’s and Helen Oyeyemi’s short story collections when I read them in the past couple years. Well. Taddeo’s a solid writer, for sure, but I did not like this collection much at all. I stubbornly finished so I could […]

Women’s pain manifested as madness

Animal by Lisa Taddeo

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The world had set me up to believe that it was women who went mad. It was simply women’s pain that manifested as madness. Bingo: People CW: rape, sexual assault, suicide Joan has just witnessed a man shooting himself in a crowded restaurant, where she was eating dinner with her lover, a married man. After this traumatic event, she decides to drive from New York to California, looking for a woman named Alice, who she thinks can help her unravel her past. One of the […]

It’s the nuances of desire that hold the truth of who we are at our rawest moments.

Three Women by Lisa Taddeo

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CBR12 Bingo: No Money! I discovered Three Women by Lisa Taddeo like many of my books–on NPR’s Best Books of 2019. I decided to use it to fill my No Money! bingo square. This was by far the easiest square for me to get. I get almost all of the books I read from the library, so most of the books I’ve read this year would work. Three Women is an apt description for this non-fiction account of the sex lives of three women. Their stories vary dramatically, but […]

Uncomfortable but worthwhile

Three Women by Lisa Taddeo

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Three Women is the apt title for Taddeo’s literary non-fiction reporting on the sex lives of three women:  Maggie, a 17 year old in a relationship with her high school teacher; Lina, a suburban wife having a one-sided love affair with her high school boyfriend; and Sloane, a married restaurant owner who has sleeps with men her husband picks out for her. Taddeo writes extremely well- this is non-fiction that reads like fiction.  Her skill is not only how she strings together a sentence, but […]



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