Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A new spin on an old idea

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno Garcia

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Moreno Garcia does an amazing job setting the right mood in this newer gothic tale. Set in Mexico in the 1950’s, you forget that the world is more modern than what Noemi Taboada experiences. Having grown up in Mexico City to an affluent family, Noemi’s life is more about finding a worthy suitor and getting married than education or developing skills to join the workforce. Despite this, Noemi is a confident, charming, smart woman who would like to study at the University. While she enjoys […]

Husband shopping isn’t as fun as it sounds

The Husbands by Holly Gramzaio

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I love “what if” books, where you have a premise that the author just goes with, no matter how out there it is. And the question of how or why really isn’t the point. I think Jose Saramago is great at what ifs, but reading his books requires a degree of patience and concentration that Gramazio doesn’t demand. So, what if…a husband emerged from your attic? Forget the fact that you’re not even married, or that you have an apparently magic attic. What would you […]

If you had 450 years to plan a welcome party…

The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu

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*some spoilers ahead* If you, like me, had never heard of this book until Netflix aired the eponymous series, it’s ok. Sometimes we watch the movie/tv show/whatever and then read the book, even though it feels weird. Three-Body Problem is a concept in classical mechanics that describes the motion of three masses that orbit each other in space. The problem is that there is no solution to always accurately describe their motion (thanks wikipedia). So now imagine there is a planet, called Trisolaris, with three […]

Maybe humans aren’t the most deserving of a new planet

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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I read this book to get my brother to stop talking about alien *insert creepy animal here (I don’t want to spoil it)*. Every time I’d see him, he would ask if I read Children of Time and then proceed to explain the premise as if he hadn’t explained it to me the last time I saw him. After maybe the fourth or fifth time I decided to read the book to shut him up. Look, I’m not a big sci-fi reader, but this one […]

It’s not too late to be in the year’s best

The Women by Kristin Hannah

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So there’s good news and bad news. Good news is, I loved this book. Bad new is that I had my top five already written up before I finished The Women, and now I have to rewrite it. It’s definitely worth the extra work though (although the book that got booted might disagree). The Women is set during the Vietnam war and follows the path of Frankie McGrath, who comes from an affluent family that proudly celebrated military service. Following the path her brother took, […]

Gruesomely delightful

I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones

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This is an unusual take of the slasher genre that I found refreshing. Is that an appropriate word to use when talking about slashers? Probably not, but I’m not sure what would work better…it was gruesomely delightful. How’s that? I can’t say it’s the first of its kind – the story reminds me of Scream, or even, to a lesser extent, Cabin in the Woods, where there was a comical self-awareness of the genre embedded in the story. I was a Teenage Slasher is narrated […]



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