Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Number One Fan- Huh. Didn’t blow me away, but I’m still thinking about that ending.

Number One Fan by Meg Elison

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She created a beautiful world. Now he wants it all. On her way to a speaking engagement, bestselling novelist Eli Grey gets into a cab and accepts a drink from the driver, trusting that everything is fine. She wakes up chained in the stranger’s basement. With no close family or friends expecting her to check in, Eli knows she needs to save herself. She soon realizes that her abduction wasn’t random, and though she thinks she might recognize her captor, she can’t figure out what he wants. Her only clues are […]

Reproductive Freedom and the Apocalypse

The Book of the Unnamed Midwife by Meg Elison

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  Content warning: sexual violence, stillbirth A worldwide plague kills nearly everyone on the planet. A midwife wakes in a San Francisco hotel. (It’s practically “28 Days Later.”) She stocks up on antibiotics—and, critically, birth control—and walks into an extra-hellish hellscape. Since females experienced the highest mortality rate, the rare woman or girl that survives is a treasure. Commodity. Object. The midwife trains herself to be self-sufficient. She carries a gun. However, the key to her survival is her avoidance of other people—that is, men. […]

Well, that was disappointing

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After I finished The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, I immediately got the sequel, The Book of Etta. I knew going in that it was not a direct sequel: it doesn’t take place immediately after the end of Midwife, but instead picks up decades later, in a new burgeoning civilization after the apocalyptic events of the first book. So I wasn’t disappointed about that. However, this book was a rare experience for me: a piece of media that has an ending so weak, it makes […]

The Road Meets the Handmaid’s Tale

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I don’t know why I keep reading post-apocalyptic books, especially when it already feels like the beginnings of some kind of apocalypse are upon us. And especially since, as a cynical and angry feminist, I know what a world-ending event that led to lawlessness would mean to the experience of women. So really, I should have known that I would find a book that explores just that emotionally devastating. But it was worth the devastation and the read. The Book of the Unnamed Midwife explores […]



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