Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Ghost in the Machine

U Up? by Cate Disabato

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In the end, this one receives the thinnest of four stars. I’m nudging it over the line because I think it has a lot going for it, even with the protagonist driving me absolutely bonkers for the last 20-30 pages. I guess I should start with the positives: I like Catie Disabato’s writing. She has a gift for creating real, believable characters, even the ghost ones. Her vision of how witchcraft works in this world: that mediums have the power to see ghosts, with certain […]

After School Times to Pass On

After School Hanako-kun by Aidalro

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After-School Hanako-kun feels a little like a bunch of pieces that might have been intended for the original main series but had to be cut for one reason or another. Several of the vignettes are probably supposed to be versions of standard high school manga/anime episodes like the beach day trip or main character catches a cold and has to stay out of things but is still somehow manages to be part of the story. In fairness, this collection is supposed to be a “behind […]

This is a journey …..

Steeple by John Allison

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Steeple is a perky journey that John Allison takes us on to find Satan and the good works they do. No, it is a journey that Allison takes us on to find a DILF (or a Priest I would like to friend on Facebook). No, it is a journey of a new Church of England minister, named Billie, who used to dabble in things as a teen, has her car blown up on her way to her new assignment, and who offers her thumb to […]

I have many thoughts, for which I’m having trouble finding words

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

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I didn’t know Susanna Clarke had a new novel until I spotted it on a trip to my favorite local bookstore. So many of us read and loved Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, with its elaborate plot, beautifully crafted characters, and Dickensian story-telling, I wondered how her new novel, so slim, would compare. Piranesi is as different from Jonathan Strange as it is equally wonderful. Piranesi lives in a house with many rooms, great halls, long corridors, and labyrinths. The lower level provides him with […]

Double, double toil and trouble; fire burn, and caldron *shrug*

The Factory Witches of Lowell by C.S. Malerich

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When I first saw this title pop up on Tor’s Instagram, I clicked “want to read” on goodreads as quickly as humanly possible. Working girls forming a union? Witchcraft is involved? A real-life New England mill city? Sisters doing it for themselves? Hell yeah, sign me up! There are Mill Girls woven into the tapestry of my family history, and I am a child and life-long resident of New England. My husband was living steps from the mills of Lowell when we met, and we […]

Started November 12th. Finished January 12th. The breaks in reading were NECESSARY

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

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…but the journey was worth it. This book is brutal. If you are sensitive at all to suffering- be it human, animal, generational, cultural- turn away now and do not look back. Four Blackfeet men engage in a bit of last-minute less-than-legal Elk hunting the weekend before Thanksgiving. What happens that day never really leaves them, but what they left behind comes rocketing back into their lives 10 years later. The 10 years since that day have not been easy; the men are plagued by […]



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