Cannonball Read 12

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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“The moral of that story, I think, is that being poor will kill you.”

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

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It happened again. I excitedly picked up a book at the store, rushed it home, then let it sit in a pile for a few months. When I finally opened it days ago I was shocked (and not shocked at all simultaneously, really) that it was an oddly appropriate collection for today’s frightening world. The first page of the book is a quote from poet Elisabeth Hewer, and it lays the roadwork for the furious march within: “god should have made girls lethal when he […]

familiar fables

Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins by Emma Donoghue

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Familiar stories are passed, one by one, from one storyteller to another. There are thirteen tales in Kissing the Witch; some will be immediately recognizable, some will require you to dust off your mental library, and some are fantastically new- conjured from collective memory and superstition but new none the less. Each tale is handed off from teller to teller; frequently the perceived villain will be the heroine of the following story. Most are, to quote Emmylou Harris, “full of heartbreak and desire”. She sings that […]

Will this be a review of this book or a review of my Episcopalian conversion? Stay tuned.

Jesus Was An Episcopalian (And You Can Be One Too!) by Rev. Chris Yaw

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There’s a lot to unpack here and most of it really isn’t about this book. I was raised Lutheran and turned out queer, which took me down Agnostic Avenue. I was also born and raised with an unfortunate penchant for self-loathing and perfectionism and never lost a deep-down belief in some kind of God. Enter a great big beautiful holy corrupt institutional enabler: the Catholic Church. And that’s how I became a queer adult convert to Catholicism. I felt something in the church I’d never […]

I can already say this will be my favourite of 2018.

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

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I’ve read a lot of good books this year, but I feel confident that Her Body and Other Parties will be my favourite read of 2018. Carmen Maria Machado’s collection of short stories is nothing short of perfection, and brings everything I was looking for in a year of reading mostly feminist, female-identified, and woman-positive fiction writers. Every story in this collection is deliciously good, though, like many, my personal favourites are “The Husband Stitch,” “Real Women Have Bodies,” and “Eight Bites.” My least favourite was “Especially Heinous” but only because […]

I just bought it because of the cover

Kidnapped by the Pirate by Keira Andrews

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In the last month or so I’ve been dealing with some mental health issues and just couldn’t bring myself to read anything that required a lot of effort or that had any potential to make me upset. I am also not exactly sure how I got a copy of this book (it’s on my phone, so I might have spent too much time browsing the romance section in iBook), but the promise of a gay bodice-ripper romantic novel was just too good not to pick […]



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