Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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The Winter of Our Discontent

Bliss Montage by Ling Ma

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In Bliss Montage, a woman and her family live in the same house as her one hundred ex-boyfriends, women trapped in a toxic friendship take a drug that makes themselves invisible, and a pregnant woman must caretake the protruding arm of her fetus as she awaits giving birth to the rest of it. The distance from everyday life that fantasy brings us can be used to magnify reality, and Ling Ma takes takes ample advantage of this in Bliss Montage, a short story collection that examines […]

Sticky Icky

The Book of the Most Precious Substance by Sara Gran

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Read this as part of CBR15Bingo: sex-banned. This book is about the pursuit of a centuries old erotic text that is said to give its participants magic powers if they follow the rules. It’s also “banned” in some places…the titular book, not this actual book. Although, given its content, I wouldn’t be surprised if it made the list sooner than later.  This is one of those books where I wonder if the author being a favorite makes me too biased to judge it accurately. There […]

“Even the afterlife is designed to keep the masses stupid.”

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka

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Bingo: Asia/Oceania; Passport: Sri Lanka Maali Almeida is dead.  He can’t remember exactly what happened, and it takes a while for the reality of his situation to sink in.  Death is confusing, a bureaucratic maze with rules that everyone seems to expect him to already know, and forms that must be filled in before his seven days are up and he must choose what happens next. Maali desperately wants to know how he died.  He can follow his body through the ghost-ridden streets of Colombo […]

May-July Leftovers

There Will Be Fire: Margaret Thatcher, the IRA, and Two Minutes That Changed History by Rory Carroll

City of Dreams by Don Winslow

Madame Restell: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York's Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist by Jennifer Wright

Under Color of Law by Aaron Philip Clark

The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson

The Last Quarry by Max Allan Collins

Tripwire by Jack Reacher

Baby Moll by John Farris

Only the Dead Know Brooklyn by Thomas Boyle

The Laundromat: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite by Jake Bernstein

Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem

Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball's Brightest Minds Created Sports' Biggest Mess by Evan Drellich

X by Davey Davis

Our Last Season: A Writer, A Fan, A Friendship by Harvey Araton

The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín

Hard Rain by Samantha Jayne Allen

The Boys From Biloxi by John Grisham

Ex Machina Book Four by Brian K. Vaughan

Jacket Weather by Mike DeCapite

Straight Cut by Madison Smartt Bell

The Crust on Its Uppers by Derek Raymond

That Kind of Danger by Donna Masini

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green

Spenser Confidential by Ace Atkins

Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead

Weyward by Emilia Hart

The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon, I Mean Noel by Ellen Raskin

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

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I usually do these at the end of the month but then I went through a big reading slump March-May. And then I roared back but realized I was behind. So apologies for this being so long. There Will Be Fire **** A good, readable text on a moment in history I knew little about. Even after reading Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing, I still had a lot of problem keeping track of all the socio-political dynamics so it’s good that Rory Carroll makes it accessible […]

To Hell, Not Back

The Devil Takes You Home by Gabino Iglesias

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Read as part of CBR14 Bingo: snakes. This book has several references to snakes, and also I think one of the characters turned into a snake? It was a wild scene, regardless.  It took me two tries to get into this one but ultimately, I’m glad I did. It didn’t match the hype but it’s a good read on its own. Essentially, there are two books here: the first 20% that’s a compelling novel and the rest which is the magical mystery tour through the throes of […]

Magic realism for the win

The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina by Zoraida Córdova

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I always think I should read more magic realism–it would probably be a great gateway drug for me to read more fiction (not that there is anything wrong with reading genres that give you joy! down the drab hegemony that insists you must only read boring Pretentious Literature that is impossible to parse and full of unhappy people doing unhappy things). It would also probably be a great way for me to read more Latin American/South American/Mexican/Latin(e)(x) literature, because–for reasons I do not know, and […]



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