Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Crying Out My Safe Word

King Blood by Jim Thompson

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I am an unrequited fan of Jim Thompson’s novels. If he’s not my favorite writer of all time, he’s one of them. I usually read books for good, well-plotted stories with richly developed characters. Rarely do I read them for metaphysics. Such is not the case with Thompson’s work. Famously dubbed the “dimestore Dostoevsky”, Thompson’s unrelenting nihilism and views of the corruption of human nature weirdly fit my own despite my cheery demeanor. I believe we’re all mere steps away from chaos and those who […]

Spoiler: white people are unspeakably awful to Native Americans (Not a spoiler)

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Once again, my favorite podcast Literary Disco delivers with an outstanding book recommendation. I hadn’t heard of this book, but thankfully the wait for it was long at my local library. I say thankfully because I am glad that people are becoming familiar with this gruesome and awesome (in the awe-stricken sense of the word) true story that should mar our nations history, if the people of our nation knew anything about it. And if, um, it wasn’t already super thoroughly marred. The Osage Nation, […]

A book that does what it set out to do.

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I know that’s a very vague title, but it’s weird to call this book great when it’s so tragic. It wasn’t great, but it was effective. I had a very hard time putting it down. It’s the story of the 2013 tornado in Moore, Oklahoma, a city that is hit incessantly by tornadoes. They’ve gotten bigger, stronger, and weirder in recent years and no one knows why. The Mercy of the Sky tells the story of the tornado from many different residents’ perspectives, from meteorologists to […]



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