Cannonball Read 15

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Beautiful Reimagining, blend of myth and romance

The Girl who Fell Beneath the Sea by Axie Oh

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The Girl who Fell Beneath the Sea is a book that immediately intrigued me because of the gorgeous cover, and then the synopsis truly dragged me in. Mina lives in a small village by the sea where every year, for the last one hundred years, they’ve sacrificed a bride to the Sea God in the hopes of quelling the storms that have plagued the country since the death of the Emperor. This year the sacrifice is supposed to be Shim Cheong, the beloved of Mina’s […]

You should all drop whatever you are doing and join me in my current obsession (double bingo)

Lore Olympus, vol 2 by Rachel Smythe

Lore Olympus, vol 3 by Rachel Smythe

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4.5 stars CBR14 Bingo: Adapted (Rachel Smythe’s modern take on the Greek myths – and obviously especially Hades and Persephone is so cleverly done) So, searching my blog and Goodreads to see what I wrote about Lore Olympus, my current web-comic obsession, I discovered that after finishing volume one in November last year, all I did was leave a two-sentence comment on Goodreads. If I recall correctly, I was pretty solidly burned out last winter, so I’m amazed I posted any reviews in the final months […]

“There aren’t any moors. There’s a sort of heath and a tarn and a mad Englishwoman painting mushrooms.”

What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher

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The last T. Kingfisher book I read (The Hollow Places) made me terrified of willow trees and school buses, and now this one made me terrified of rabbits (technically hares, but, ya know). Which is to say, this is another astoundingly imaginative work. While it’s certainly not necessary, I’d recommend reading Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” before this as it’s based on that short story. It gives you a great appreciation for how the author changed (I’d say improved) the story. As […]

The world is a constant compromise, a greeting of the other and of yourself.

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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There is something about Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s writing that just speaks to me. I haven’t read enough of her books to make definitive statements about her writing, but in the works I have read, it feels like she writes with one middle finger raised. It speaks to me. I don’t delude myself, as a white American whose ancestors definitely fucked around in places they should not have been, I am part of the group she is raising that middle finger at, and I am fine with […]

“Children long to be eaten. Everyone knows that.”

XO Orpheus: 50 New Myths by Kate Bernheimer (editor)

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Am I typing this up while wearing a tee featuring the cover of the d’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths? YOU KNOW IT! That strange tome of simplified myth and ultra-bright illustration cracked open a need in me when I was very young. I re-read that book countless times, and used it as the entry point into the larger world of mythology. Combined with a Catholic upbringing that was far more focused on the deaths of the saints than on anything else, you could saw I […]

Henry James would not have understood what a smart house is.

The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware

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I read the first third of this in my paperback copy, then switched over to the audio to see if I could jump start my interest in it again. It worked! For a while, at least. It helped me get through the book, anyway. I liked the audio version better. I was super into this book at first, but as soon as the main character reached the house in the country, something about it lost me. It probably also didn’t help that I was traveling […]



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