Cannonball Read 15

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Trudging through Drudgery

The Ritual by Mo Hayder

Magnus by Arjen Lubach

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The Ritual (Mo Hayder) ***½ When it comes to thrillers and crime fiction, I’m stuck in a quandary in the sense that I usually like the idea better than the execution. My main problem is that so many books within the genre seem so badly written: the characters are flat, the prose is hokey and the authors always seem to want to outdo each other by coming up with either the goriest or the most outlandish plots. There are plenty of exceptions, of course, but […]

Poetry in the Marrow: Throwing the Bones by catherine yronwode

Throwing the Bones: How to Foretell the Future with Bones, Shells, and Nuts by catherine yronwode

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A few weeks ago, as I was cruising around online looking at Lenormand decks (the subject of another review), I saw someone describe themselves in their profile as “bonecaster”. Having spent many years among practitioners of non-mainstream faiths, I had seen the term before, but had pushed it aside. It sounded ghoulish and, quite frankly, intimidating. Like many Americans, I’ve always tried to think about death as little as possible. As I’ve aged, however, Death has come to visit more frequently, and I’ve begun discovering […]

All right, I was a witch. Does it matter?

Circe by Madeline Miller

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The witch, Circe, turns up in the Odyssey, famous for turning half of Odysseus’ men into pigs, before changing them back again and giving Odysseus aid in his ever longer journey home from Troy. Circe, her island, and her interactions with Odysseus take up a single chapter of the Odyssey, and from this Miller weaves a much more satisfying tale in this 2018 novel. Circe is the eldest and least-regarded of four children of the Titan Helios and sea nymph Perse. She grows up as […]

Witch Hunt!

Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch by Rivka Galchen

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The mix of modern crime procedurals and the deep stupidity of superstition just didn’t click for me. Katherina Kepler is a war widow (or at least she assumes so, since her husband never came back), and one of her sons is Johannes Kepler, authority on the newly discovered revolutionary laws of planetary motion.  She herself happens to be an authority on herbal remedies, but not everyone in the village has confidence in her treatments.  The random cow has a bad spell, and apparently at some […]

Do you already have a vague idea of what self-care is? If yes, you can skip this book

The Witch's Book of Self-Care by Arin Murphy-Hiscock

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BINGO – SELF-CARE Arin Murphy-Hiscock endeavors to instruct in practical self-care through a witch’s lens. She begins with an introduction to what self-care is and isn’t and how the idea of self-care has been co-opted by some many people and industries to make a buck. She then breaks down modes of self-care into Mental and Emotional Self-Care, Physical Self-Care, Spiritual Self-Care, and Household Self-Care. She sprinkles spells, rituals, and recipes throughout as well as practical tips on how to incorporate self-care into one’s daily life. […]

Spellbinding

Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

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After a long day at work, university lecturer Stefan de Graaf returns to his home in the sleepy Dutch town of Beek, kisses his wife and sits down at the kitchen table. The wife tells him Grandma K has come to visit. They laugh and talk about their day. In a corner of the living room stands a silent woman, dressed in rags and chains, smelling of decay. Her eyes and mouth have been sewn shut. The wife has hung a dish towel over the […]



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