Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About andtheIToldYouSos

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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:

This book almost killed me. Literally.

Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story by Chuck Klosterman

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So, the book itself didn’t actually almost kill me- as much as it tried to do- but I just finished this audio book while driving home from work (yay essential workforce) on a highway that was not, in the slightest, plowed. I have been a New Englander my entire life. I like driving in the snow. I am confident, competent, and careful. This was the worst drive I have ever had- no hyperbole. A tractor trailer blew by me (only one lane, mind you) and […]

“What I mean to say is, the more you remember, the more you’ve lost.”

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

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I thought I remembered much more of Station Eleven than I did; I had remembered it as a story of Kirsten and the Traveling Symphony and several scrapes with some religious extremists. I remembered Jeevan in the fortress of his brother’s tower. I remembered skulking through rotting schools and all-encompassing trees. What strikes me now is how immediately the sense of dread starts to kick in; there is no slow build; a statement about everything falling to pieces kicks in within the first chapter. Maybe […]

“When you’re a kid, it’s hard to tell the innocuous secrets from the ones that will kill you if you keep them.”

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

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Karen Russell was just 25 when this collection came out; a fact that is plastered all over the cover, festooned in blurbs throughout the opening pages, and the header on almost every piece of criticism that was launched at the same time as this collection. Her youth is/was impressive, and most certainly made me look back at my 25-year-old self with pity, but her youth is not the spark that sets this fire. She may have been young, but her ability to give voice to […]

Daisy Jones screams “Not Like Other Girls” from the bottom of Cliche Canyon

Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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I have read this before. I have seen it. I have heard it. This book is like a transcription of a Behind the Music episode. Everyone waxing rhapsodic over the Sunset Strip in the 70s. Ugh. There is nothing unique or remarkable about this tale. No grand revelations, nothing that overcomes tropes, just archetypes smashing into archetypes while being saved-by-or-slaves-to tHe MuSic. I truly do not understand the rapturous reviews around Daisy Jones and The Six. There is nothing special about this story, nor is there anything special […]

I have spent a good deal of 2020 in a cadaver-shaped hole.

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

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And no, I do not mean an open grave. The more we hurtle towards impending doom- pandemics! global warming! world war!- the more solace I seek in, well, death. I didn’t set out on the morbid marathon on purpose, but here I am! It was not my intention to get down and dirty (ha!) with death this year, but I am enjoying the ride. I have been a long-time fan of Mary Roach since Spook, but for some reason I forgot to start at the […]

“Cinema helps us to remember that although we all have the right to shine, some of us must shine in the background, out of focus, and not too brightly.”

Ayoade on Top by Richard Ayoade

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Finally, a book about the greatest film of our generation! What film, you may ask? What film does Richard Ayoade venerate, dissect, cling to, and live for? Richard Ayoade; the author of several books on film, director and writer of several films, host of a delightful travel show, and beloved cast member/co-creator of Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace (and many other things) has written an entire book about the forgettable 2003 Gwenyth Paltrow rom-com View From the Top. Yes, View From the Top; the movie where Mike Myers […]



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