Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“In heroin addicts, I had seen the debasement that comes from the loss of free will and enslavement to what amounts to an idea: permanent pleasure, numbness, and the avoidance of pain. But man’s decay has always begun as soon as he has it all, and is free of friction, pain, and the deprivation that temper his behavior.”

Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones

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This was extremely informative, and I should have read it sooner. More info and developments have come out about the opioid epidemic since this book was published in 2015, but this book itself won’t ever really be dated, because what he did here was to investigate its origins. No matter what happens down the road, this will always be how it started. (I’ve heard that Empire of Pain is a good follow up, but I don’t know if I have the emotional fortitude to tackle […]

“And it wasn’t fair. That was the thing that was at the heart of my reluctance and my resentment. Some people make it out of their stories unscathed, thriving. Some people don’t.”

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

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In one word: Grieving Cannonball Read Bingo: Uncannon I picked this for uncannon because Gyasi is giving new life to a story that we’ve seen many times over from the Eurocentric white perspective. There have been plenty of books about drug addiction (even specifically about Oxycontin and the havoc it is wreaking in America), mental illness, the crossroads of science and religion in academia, and an overachieving character trying to fix her heart by using her head. She is taking very familiar tropes and given […]

“I was more afraid of the truth than the lie. The truth would change the circumstances of my life. The lie was static. The lie was peaceful. I was happy with the lie.”

Long Bright River by Liz Moore

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It’s always an interesting time when authors who write literary fiction decide to play in genre sandboxes (note: literary fiction is also a genre, and not one with more merit than any other, just so we’re clear on my position here). The Unseen World, the author’s previous book, is one of my favorite books I’ve read in the last several years. I liked it so much that I put all of the author’s published work on my TBR (which I have of course since ignored). […]



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