Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About andtheIToldYouSos

CBR11 participant
CBR12 participant
CBR13 participant
CBR14 Participant
CBR14 Bingo Badges

Bookseller by day, book reader by night...and hopefully a reviewer somewhere in between. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: andtheIToldYouSos's Quick Questions interview.)

andtheIToldYouSos's Reviews:

sometimes you just want to be in a low-fi band with your sister, but a literal battle between immortality and death gets in the way

The Book of Love by Kelly Link

by 7 Comments

Absolutely perfect. No one can harness both the magic and ennui of being a teenager like Kelly Link. People will be handing this down to younger siblings for generations. Susannah and Laura are sisters. They are also band mates. The third member of their band, Daniel is their best friend and next-door neighbor. Oh, and Susannah’s friend-with-benefits. On the night of Daniel’s birthday, at a wild dive bar with a real carousel on stage, something happens: Susannah kisses Laura’s crush. Laura kisses Daniel. Susannah’s best […]

Freaky, Funny, and Frustrating (In a Good Way)

Parasol Against the Axe by Helen Oyeyemi

by 2 Comments

Every time I think that I may have Helen Oyeyemi figured out she hits me with another blast of wild magic. She often deals in the inner workings of fairy tales, but this time she has taken on a fairy tale of a city: Prague. We’ve all heard of the (super played out trope) of “New York City IS a character!”, but Prague is in charge here. Prague may be driving the theoretical bus, but Thea, Hero, and a cast of bizarre folks including a […]

a lovely story of what it means to be human…

Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino

by Leave a Comment

…with a godawful cover and title. ARRRGH! This is a magical little slice of existence, but one would never know that based upon the generic title and messy cover art. Honestly, had I not been introduced without the cover, I can’t say that I would have picked it up! Adina enters our world at the same moment that Voyager (that of Carl Sagan’s Golden Record) leaves this very same world. There’s some sort of transference of energy and matter; one magical thing leaves and another […]

how much is folklore and how much is just a mad ramble?

Treacle Walker by Alan Garner

by Leave a Comment

Alan Garner is a titan of British literature, but it took two other lions of language and a slow day in the shop for me to finally crack open one of his tales. Why did I wait so long? Treacle Walker is exactly the kind of woodsy weirdness that calls to me from the gloam. It was a snowy evening and dead quiet in the bookstore. Every task was complete, everything that could be tidied was tidy beyond tidy, and I had some time to […]

Is it too early in the year for me to claim my favorite book?

Poor Deer by Claire Oshetsky

by 4 Comments

Reader, this book grabbed me by the perpetually wet shoestrings and dragged me through the night on a quixotic and tragic adventure. We know the hallmarks of Southern Gothic, but what about New England? Often we get the “spooky” bits of New England: Lovecraft, Salem, Puritans, but that’s not the full scope of New England Gothic. As a life-long resident of the damp and dark North, allow me to shed some weak Winter light on our Gothic trademarks: dying mill towns crumbling churches perpetual piles […]

I know it may be wrong but, I’m in love with [Sadie’s] mom

Alice Sadie Celine by Sarah Blakely-Cartwright

by 2 Comments

Fountains of Wayne, the poet laureates of New Jersey, wrote the eternal hymn “Stacy’s Mom” way back in the halcyon days of 2003: “Stacey’s mom has got it going on”. How could they have known that a cool twenty years later we would now be saying the same thing about Sadie’s mom?! Is this just a smutty book about an eternally messed up friendship and family? Yes and no. Alice and Sadie are best friends. Alice is a cypher and Sadie is an anal-retentive nightmare. […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo