Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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I am Patient 6

Dead Of Summer by Ryan la Sala

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If you’ve finished Widow’s Bay and are looking for more of that ‘the next Martha’s Vineyard and definitely not cursed’ vibe, then Dead Of Summer is the book for you! Ollie Veltman and his mother are heading home to the island of Anchor’s Mercy for the best summer ever. How could it not be when the tourists love the queer friendly island culture (it’s basically Provincetown) and beautiful sandy beaches. Ollie and his friends know that something more is deeply wrong with the island but […]

“I’ve started to think of Earth as a wax cylinder; the sun the needle, laid on the land and drawing out the day’s music—the sound of people arguing, cooking, laughing, singing, moaning, crying, flirting. And behind that, a silent sweep of millions of sleeping people, washing across the Earth like static.”

The History of Sound by Ben Shattuck

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In a “hook-and-chain” couplet structure, Shattuck meanders back and forth across three centuries in New England with six pairs of stories exploring themes that rhyme. This collection starts off pretty slow and gentle, and for the most part stays that way, telling the stories of ordinary people and mostly ordinary happenings. As such, I found myself quite surprised about halfway through about how thoroughly I had been sucked in, and how much I was enjoying myself. Part of what sets this collection of stories apart […]

Between the Accident and the Incident

Curse of the Blumenthals by Phyllis Karas

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Three generations of journalist Phyllis Karas’s family are marked by two great tragedies – the car crash which killed six members of the family, and the murder committed by the first grandchild born after that accident hardly twenty years later. This is an interesting mash-up of a book – part family history, part true crime, and sometimes even a scrapbook. Karas dives into the crimes which impacted her family, whether they were those who committed them or the victims, studying how their effects rippled through […]

What can I say that hasn’t already been said?

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

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The Story: the narrator (Richard, although his name is used so rarely that I kept forgetting what it was) leaves an unhappy existence in California to attend the small, private Hampden College in Vermont. There, he decides to study Greek under an enigmatic professor, Julian, alongside a small, elitist group of other Classics students: cold and intellectual Henry, anxious hypochondriac Francis, twins Charles and Camilla (I wish I could find descriptors for these other than “twin,” but unfortunately they’re both very thinly drawn), and Bunny, […]

The Beachiest of Reads

The Perfect Couple by Elin Hilderbrand

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Very soon to be a series on Netflix starring Nicole Kidman. Suddenly I have the urge to recite the AMC commercial monologue- We come to this place for magic… somehow heartbreak feels good in a place like this… They could be talking about the lovely island of Nantucket, where Celeste Otis and Benji Winbury are set to be married this weekend. The groom’s mother has arranged a lavish ceremony on the family’s estate. Its full steam ahead on the wedding of the summer until the […]

Between the Freeze and the Thaw

The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon

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When midwife Martha Ballard is called to inspect the body of a man found frozen in the Kennebec River, the last person she expects it to be is the accused rapist of one of her patients – and when she determines that he has been murdered, the situation only becomes more complex. I first heard about Martha Ballard a few months ago, when I picked up the Pulitzer Prize-winning book based on her life (A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her […]



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