Cannonball Read 12

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Bodies Hit The Floor

Killing Williamsburg by Bradley Spinelli

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A big ol’ content warning: this book is about suicide. Suicide is on almost every page. The book itself includes graphic depictions of suicide and bodies in a post-mortem state as a result of suicide. Though I won’t go into detail myself, there’s no way to avoid talking about suicide in this review. If you are triggered by suicide or have a history with suicidal ideation, please skip both this book and this review. … Along with Colson Whitehead’s Zone One, this is another New York […]

What is happening?

The House We Grew Up In by Lisa Jewell

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I’m not even sure where to start with this one. Typically, I would summarize the plot, but I’m not sure I know what happened. I may have fallen asleep and missed something, but I’ll give it a whirl – A quirky family of six live in a house. Their family seems to revolve around their Easter celebration, until one year, tragedy strikes. Mother and Father divorce. They split the house in two and Father moves next door. Mother invites her girlfriend and her child to […]

I’m sorry. I can’t. Don’t hate me.

The Astonishing Colour of After by Emily X.R. Pan

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CBR10Bingo: Dream Vacation (BINGO!) Emily X.R. Pan’s The Astonishing Colour of After begins with teenager Leigh recounting the day her mother died from suicide, leaving a crumpled note in the trash with a crossed out message: “I want you to remember.” Soon after, a mysterious red bird leaves a gift for Leigh: a package filled with mementos of her mother. Leigh convinces her father to take her to Taiwan for the first time to meet her mother’s estranged family, secretly hoping she’ll also be able […]

Same old Sedaris, now with added feels

Calypso by David Sedaris

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For several years now, I’ve refused to buy hardcover books. I don’t like the added expense, of course, but mostly, I just don’t like the extra bulk and really don’t like how they feel in my hand: too much like textbooks or hymnals. I don’t need to be reminded of either when I’m trying to read something fun. As a result, I’m consistently a year or two behind everyone else with my reading, a (discount) price I’m willing to pay.   David Sedaris has long […]

Spooky and beautiful and unprotected from the raw bloodiness of the world

All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews

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Yolandi and Elfrieda are sisters raised in an isolated, stifling, patriarchal community of Russian Mennonite immigrants in rural Canada. Their parents buy Elf a forbidden piano to give her an outlet, and she pours everything into her music, leaving home at 17 to study in Oslo, eventually becoming a world-renowned concert pianist. But her life is weighed down by the crippling pain of depression, and she ends up in the hospital after yet another suicide attempt.  In All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews, everyone […]



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