Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About dsbs42

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Nerd. Professional student. Eager reader. Reluctant writer. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: dsbs42's Quick Questions interview.)

dsbs42's Reviews:

Likable Rich White People Problems

Truly Madly Guilty by Liane Moriarty

by 2 Comments

This is my sixth Moriarty book. Like many people, Big Little Lies was the first (and best, for my money), but they’ve all been good, so I keep reading. In Truly Madly Guilty, we meet Clementine and Sam, Erika and Oliver, and Tiffany and Vid, each going about, living their ordinary, suburban lives, until something awful happens at an ordinary, friendly barbecue hosted by the latter couple in their lavish back yard. Two months later, the characters deal with the fall-out from this event and wonder […]

“The craft of writing as the art of thinking”

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

by 2 Comments

I did not want to finish this book, because I knew I’d then have to write a review, and I don’t know if I can do Between the World and Me justice. This short National Book Award winner from 2015 by Ta-Nehisi Coates is a three-part letter to the author’s (then) 15-year-old son, Samori Coates. It was written shortly after the killer of Michael Brown was acquitted, inspired by his son’s reaction to the injustice, and is Coates’s paean and lament about the truths of […]

This is not for you.

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

by 2 Comments

Maybe you’re right, Johnny. Maybe you’re right. House of Leaves opens with these words, purportedly put there by Johnny Truant, a young sex lunatic who discovers a manuscript, put together by an old man called Zampanò, about a film that may or may not exist, made by a medium-famous middle-aged photographer named Will Navidson, about a house that he lives in that’s bigger on the inside, all annotated by editors who appear unable to make further contact with Johnny. As a journalism student back in […]

Good for you, not for me.

Lumberjanes Volume 1: Beware the Kitten Holy by Noelle Stevenson

Lumberjanes Volume 2: Friendship to the Max by Noelle Stevenson

by 1 Comment

I don’t even want to write this review because I like Noelle Stevenson so much, but I think “Miss Quinzella Thiskwin Penniquiqul Thistle Crumpet’s Camp for Hardcore Lady Types” should have been a clue that Lumberjanes is just too much whimsy for me. The Lumberjanes graphic novel series (which is still ongoing), created by Noelle Stevenson of Nimona fame (another book I didn’t enjoy as much as everyone around me seemed to) is about five kids attending a girl scout type summer camp, the supernatural mischief […]

You Can’t Spell Brilliant Without Bri

On the Come Up by Angie Thomas

by 4 Comments

Alright, Angie Thomas, you got me; I’ll read anything you write. On the Come Up is the second book by the author of The Hate U Give (which I also loved, if that wasn’t clear from the first sentence of this review). This one takes place in the same universe as THUG, and makes some reference to the events that occurred in that story. Like in THUG, Thomas uses a ripped-from-the-headlines hook to write her characters around; in this case, the harassment and racism of school […]

Everything Sucks and Here’s Why

Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self Delusion by Jia Tolentino

by 3 Comments

Trick Mirror is a collection of nine essays by millennial writer and cultural critic Jia Tolentino. And these are ESSAYS. At times, I felt like I was reading a succession of a particularly insightful and eloquent student’s final papers. Thoroughly researched and vaguely connected by the theme of the line between introspection and narcissism, the essays examine everything from the ecstasy of the highs brought on by religion and drugs, the wedding industry, rape on college campuses (her alma mater of UVA in particular), her […]



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