Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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A sweeping epic of two families that I could not put down

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

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BINGO – Home Summary: Homegoing follows multiple generations of families that start in 17th century Ghana and track all the way through modern day. Homegoing follows a linear plot structure but each chapter switches from family to family and from one generation to the next. This novel is sweeping in its scope. The culmination of the two stories lines comes together in an expected way but one that is still works. Most vignettes of the families are about finding one’s home or space, trying to […]

The perfection of imperfection

Fights: One Boy’s Triumph Over Violence by Joel Christian Gill

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Fights: One Boy’s Triumph Over Violence is not a perfect book. Which is what makes it interesting and exciting. This is (as the author, Joel Christian Gill, themselves says) a memoir not a biography. These snippets of Joel growing up in Virginia, living in the ‘partments, dealing with bullies (adult and kid) are based on events that happened, people he knew and a little poetic license to move his story along. They take you on a journey of how the author learned how and when […]

So much fun. So fucked up. Can I say that?

The Mad and the Bad by Jean-Patrick Manchette

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First of all I have to cop to cheating on this. Kind of. The beginning of this review is maybe 2 years old, however, I just reread the book! So…recycling and expanding. It’s fine! la la la just never you mind I READ THIS IN ONE SITTING. It’s funny, it’s dark, it’s cartoonish, it’s Tarantinoesque, it’s either brilliant social/political/economic/mental health commentary or the rantings of a crazy person. Or both. I loved it. The friend who gave it to me said, “Yeah, he is pretty […]

Tana French is back with a vengeance and a penchant for Wild West-isms, and I am HERE. FOR. IT. 

The Searcher by Tana French

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This is a safe review; I’ll give you no spoilers and I’ll give you no major plot points- but I will let you know that no, we have not returned to the Dublin Murder Squad. While I found the departure disappointing in The Witch Elm, I found it thrilling here; the idyllic landscape filled with the insidious creep of small town communities. While we have not returned to the Murder Squad, we have returned to having a protagonist on the searching side of the law- and […]

Too Much and Too Little

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon

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Rivers Solomon tells an unflinching tale of slavery and survival, set in a future that is horrifically similar to both America’s dreadful past and terrible present. They sugarcoat nothing; what else would you expect from a story that starts with a gruesome amputation? I have to applaud Solomon for writing a brutal and gut wrenching story. They shout out the horrors of racism, giving graphic depictions of brutality. Black women are tortured, raped, and publicly executed, and Solomon makes you stare at these scenes of […]

“If you spy a naked man among the pines, you must run as if the Devil were after you.”

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

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Never have truer words been spoken! This collection of short stories crept around my periphery for some time, and I am both overjoyed to have finally given in to it and disappointed in myself for not biting earlier. I came across it originally on a list of fairy-tale retellings on Autostraddle, and when it popped up again in the employee recommendations section of one of my favorite booksellers (Crow Bookshop in Burlington, what’s up!) I knew that it was meant to be. Still, it sat […]



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