Cannonball Read 14

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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More than 40 sisters inside. And I have trouble with one!

Spectacular Sisters: Amazing Stories of Sisters from Around the World by Aura Lewis

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Spectacular Sisters: Amazing Stories of Sisters from Around the World by Aura Lewis includes some sisters you know, others you might have heard of, some you have probably never heard of and others are so well known even my dad has heard of them! The woman featured in the couple pages biographies, cover all walks of life from political leaders (ancient and modern), warriors, pop culture, artists, and writers. We see the gambit of siblings who call each other sister. Some were terribly close, others had […]

Three stars, for now. It’s not the book it’s me??

Moon Witch, Spider King (The Dark Star Trilogy, #2) by Marlon James

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This book has been holding up my review queue since I finished it in late March. I was surprised at my reaction to it when I read it, and wasn’t sure what I wanted to say, because I wasn’t sure if I liked the book or not. And, if I didn’t like it, why not? I feel like nothing much has changed in James’s style in the last three years. I think it’s me, and that I just wasn’t in the mood at all to […]

“Children long to be eaten. Everyone knows that.”

XO Orpheus: 50 New Myths by Kate Bernheimer (editor)

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Am I typing this up while wearing a tee featuring the cover of the d’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths? YOU KNOW IT! That strange tome of simplified myth and ultra-bright illustration cracked open a need in me when I was very young. I re-read that book countless times, and used it as the entry point into the larger world of mythology. Combined with a Catholic upbringing that was far more focused on the deaths of the saints than on anything else, you could saw I […]

Hands-Down My Favorite TITLE of 2022

Please Miss: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Penis by Grace E. Lavery

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Please Miss: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Penis Let that title sink in. It’s so great! Also great: hearing Grace Lavery say it aloud herself. If you have any interest in diving into this piece (and holy moly, you should!) I HIGHLY recommend listening to the audio performance- and I do mean performance! Grace, Danny Lavery, and Marc Vietor do not skimp on the drama and pomp. Grace, in particular, has a lovely elastic and elegant lilt- cliché of clichés, but I do think I […]

Up Close and Personal

Intimacies by Katie Kitamura

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Read as part of CBR13Bingo: uncannon. The novelist is of Japanese descent and her book comes from the perspective a non-white character.  Reading Intimacies was a beautiful struggle. I wanted to like it more than I did. It has a lot going for it. But it’s kind of a donut book in that there’s a big hole in the middle: we know almost nothing at all about the protagonist. There’s little about her background, who she is, what her interests are, etc. Katie Kitamura even withholds her name. […]

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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