Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A Guest in the House: a twisty, turny, graphic novel

A Guest in the House by E.M. Carroll

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mood music: Crazy – gnarls barkley The last graphic novel I read was Batman: The Killing Joke by Alan Moore, a dark and gritty telling of the Joker’s origins as a failed comedian turned violent criminal. This seems to be a pattern with the graphic novels that I gravitate towards, including Watchmen and Maus, and this novel is no different. Written and illustrated by E.M. Carroll (formerly Emily Carroll), the story tells the tale of Abby, a recently married discount store clerk, and follows her day-to-day with […]

Anita de Monte Laughs Last: shedding light on a forgotten artist

Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez

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mood music: Fantasmas – humbe I have complicated feelings about this book, and so I will preface by saying that I am rating it 3.75/5, rounding up on here. The beginning was a little slow, but it picked up for me about a fifth of the way through, and I couldn’t put it down after that. Gonzalez is a talented writer, able to craft fully formed, vibrant characters with narration bouncing off the page. If you like one of her characters, you really like them. […]

Helpmeet: the little book of surrealistic body horror

Helpmeet by Naben Ruthnum

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mood music: Me and My Husband – mitksi At a cool 94 pages, Helpmeet was a quick read. Still, in even such a short novella it packs a punch with detailed descriptions of body disfigurement and decay as we follow the complex marriage of a couple living in 1900s New York City. We are introduced to Louise Wilk, a former nurse, as she is packing up the final items of her home in preparation for her move to her husband’s childhood home in Buffalo, New York. […]

Daisy Jones & The Six: DNF at 52%

Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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mood music: Fleetwood Mac – the chain This is definitely my biggest reading disappointment so far this year. I realize it’s only February, but still … I fell for the hype from BookTok. This post will be pretty short. My main issue with this book was the structure. Unlike other ensemble novels that I have read, the structure here was like that of an audio transcript, which to give credit, Reid does disclose in the prologue that this is a “collection of interviews” with the […]

Slewfoot: the devil is in the details

Slewfoot by Brom

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mood music: me and the devil – Soap&Skin I had never heard of Brom and I was unfamiliar with his work before picking up this book. I found out about this book through TikTok and was intrigued by the premise, even if it was something that was outside of my usual reading genres. Slewfoot is set in colonial New England, a few years after the Salem Witch Trials. The protagonist, Abitha, is a young woman who is a fairly recent arrival to the colonies as […]

Eileen: when being unlikeable is your personality

Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh

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mood music: twilight – Bôa My first read of 2024…a disappointment. I had high hopes as it was adapted into a film starring Anne Hathaway and Thomasin McKenzie, but it was tough even at a short 197 pages on ebook. Eileen is narrated by the aforementioned woman, now in her seventies, as she recounts her last week in her hometown, a small snowy city in New England she calls X-ville. Raised by two alcoholic parents, twenty-four-year-old Eileen is a very miserable person with a love […]



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