Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Serial Killer Book I’ve Been Waiting For

Notes On An Execution by Danya Kukafka

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I went in to this book so wary! I’m not a huge fan of serial killers or the true crime mania that glorifies men who murder (mostly) women. So even though I’d seen glowing review after breathless recommendation of Notes On an Execution, I doubted I’d get past 20%. I am never so pleased to be wrong than when it comes to loving an unexpected book. The premise of this one is simple, it is the day of Ansel Power’s execution. There are brief chapters […]

We Should Have Seen It Coming

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

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I am a mood reader prone to slumps and I also rely on my public library (and four additional in-state systems who have reciprocal relationships with my county – libraries are a miracle and you should support yours more) so I don’t always get to read the hot new book when it is hot and new. I know this was the big book around here last year, I read the stats post. So I doubt I’m adding anything new to the conversation here when I […]

Art Is Power

Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li

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I’m not sure I can discuss this book coherently. I’ve started and stopped and rewritten this review so many times I’m starting to feel dizzy. How do I convey the perfect writing, the depth of emotion, the complex characters, the history and meaning and joy and sorrow Grace D. Li has managed? In a freaking heist novel??!? The audacity! Let’s start with the basic plot: steal back the five bronze zodiac animal heads that were looted after the burning of Beijing’s Old Summer Palace and are […]

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 […]



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