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:

What Did I Just Read?

The Changeling by Victor Lavalle

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This wasn’t a bad book. The writing was good enough that I blew through it in about 3 sittings and I wanted to keep reading, so there’s that. But I was disappointed. And I feel guilty that I was disappointed, especially since Lavalle is a talented writer and a lot of things in this story worked really, really well. But there was also a lot that didn’t, at least for me. I can’t appropriately talk about this book without spoilers, so stop reading here if […]

The Worst Corporate Office Ever

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This book was like The Hunger Games meets The Handmaids Tale in a corporate office scenario. It was morbidly twisted and solidifies my hatred for anything that looks like a cubicle corporate job. I could almost feel my creative juices being crushed while I read. Herman Louse is a live-in caretaker/nurse for a squeamish germ-a-phobic old billionaire who he calls Poppy. Poppy lives in the top penthouse of his large casino somewhere in the middle of a desert and is waited upon by a staff of what seems […]

Saying Goodbye to an Old Friend

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I didn’t think this book would be so emotionally difficult to get through. As readers of someone else’s fiction, it’s difficult to remember that there’s a real, down-to-earth, eats-and-breathes human behind the characters and fake world we so fall in love with. Terry Pratchett is himself, and even though Discworld was born from his head like Athena from Zeus, he’s not Discworld or any of the characters in it. In fact, to read his nonfiction is to sit in a very earthly room beside him […]

He’s Not A Hero, But He’s the Best Man for the Job

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I would totally read Terry Pratchett’s ink blotter or scribbled napkin, so my opinion on anything Pratchett is probably a little biased. However, “Going Postal” is my all-time favorite Discworld novel, and its one of his best. This is my third read of this book, and since I’m using it for a guest lecture on building an ‘invented’ world, I really paid attention to how Pratchett made the story. It’s just short of brilliant, and I wish I could have seen this man storyboard because […]

What the Victorians Didn’t Want You to Know

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Many thanks to faintingviolet for passing off Unmentionable to me. It was an excellent compliment to Bound to Please, and reading the two together helped create a uniquely full picture for what life was like for the middle-class Victorian woman. It was bad. Plain and simple. While it can be argued that pestilence, disease, a lack of flush toilets, and leeches being the closest thing to an antibiotic made life tough for everyone, these books shed an undoubted truth that however difficult it was for the males in society, […]

In Which I Was Tormented By Alliteration

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I should have stopped reading this book at this sentence: “The plain, practical Puritan and the gin-nipping flapper; robust Rosie the Riveter and waifish, wraith-like Twiggy; the billowing, buxom Gibson Girl and the beaded, barefoot earth mother…..” I’ll just stop there because I’m already angry and my brain hurts. I DNFed this book after page 100 because I just couldn’t take the alliteration anymore. It was like Dr. Seuss decided to leave children’s books behind and take on feminist non-fiction. Although I think Dr. Seuss […]



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