Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About Ale

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I'm TAing in creative writing, and I'm in the midst of editing my first novel. Along with CBR, I have book reviews published with "The Literary Review," short essay with "Fiction Southeast" and a forthcoming publication with "The Book Smuggler's Den." CBR has definitely helped my writing skills since now I know what readers are looking for for in their works. So, thank you, CBR! Hopefully someday, we'll be able to review my novel on this blog. :) (Learn more about this Cannonballer: Ale's Quick Questions interview.)

Ale's Reviews:

Not What I Was Expecting? Maybe?

St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves: Stories by Karen Russell

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I absolutely loved Karen Russell’s Vampires in the Lemon Grove short story collection, but was really disappointed in Swamplandia!, so when I saw she had another short story collection, I was so excited to read more of her short works. St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves was….not what I was expecting? Granted, Vampires was published in 2013, and St. Lucy’s is her first collection, published in 2006, so I may just be running into my usual issue of having read an author in reverse. But where a […]

Magically Heartwarming

The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen

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Crystalclear recommended The Magic Fish to me for it’s fairytales and the beautiful illustrations. And she couldn’t have been more right. Trung Le Nguyen weaves a heartwarming story of Tien and his mother, two Vietnamese immigrants living in the US who are trying to navigate language, culture, and coming of age while battling loneliness and family duty. Tien’s mother asks him to read her fairytales to help her with her English, and as they unfold, they remind her of how the fairytales are different in Vietetamese […]

Am I Too Dumb for this Book?

Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi

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Crystalclear listened to the audio version of Mr. Fox and wasn’t sure how she felt about it, but it’s speculative-leaning and maybe reading the actual book would be a different experience, so she suggested it to me. While I do think it was better to read it than to listen to it (Oyeyemi does a lot with fonts, blank space, and paragraph structures that make way more sense looking at it than listening to it), I also am not totally sure how I felt about Mr. […]

Art Imitating Life Imitating Art

Wastelands: The New Apocalypse by John Joseph Adams & Others

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I’m putting together a new class for work that is supposed to cover cross-cultural perspectives, but also be speculative, but also be relevant to ‘kids these days’, so what better place to start than with an anthology of post-apocalyptic fiction specializing in pandemics! Chocked full of terrifying tales, Wastelands: The New Apocalypse includes a variety of authors from different places, cultures, and perspectives all writing about humanity’s deepest and darkest fears. From deadly spores and burning suns to viruses and carcinogenic air, this anthology mines for […]

I’d Pay So Much to See this as a Movie

The Change by Kirsten Miller

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When picking up the actual book I ordered at the library, I was lured in by their “new releases” display. The book jacket of The Change promised some menopause-induced magic, a murder mystery, and three bada** women taking down some powerful men on the backdrop of a coastal New  York town. So of course I picked it up, and it was an absolutely delightful ride. Harriet, Nessa, and Jo are three women in their 50s going through a rough time. Harriet’s husband leaves her for a […]

An Old Favorite

Howl's Moving Castle by Dianna Wynne Jones

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  I don’t know how many times I’ve read Howl’s Moving Castle. At least three, but probably more. If books were comfort food, this one would be creamy mac-n-cheese in a ceramic bowl on a cold winter’s day. It never gets old, it never gets dated. It is always exactly what it needs to be; which is a romping good time. For those who’ve not yet indulged in this delight, Howl’s Moving Castle follows Sophie, a young woman who inadvertently angers Ingary’s resident bad-witch and gets herself […]



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