Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About Dusty Highway

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To paraphrase Wynonna, books are my strongest weakness. I've been away for a few years. It's time to get back to it. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: Dusty Highway's Quick Questions interview - as dAvid.)

Dusty Highway's Reviews:

The wise sense what is to come

The Collected Poems of C.P. Cavafy: A New Translation by C.P. Cavafy

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I know very little about poetry and even less about how to write about poetry, so to quote Prince, forgive me if this goes astray. I first heard of Cavafy when I was browsing through a book of gay love poems at Barnes and Noble back in my early twenties when I was first coming out. The simplicity of the poem made me think he was an ancient, perhaps the male equivalent of Sappho, but when I found this book, The Collected Poems of C.P. […]

Alice doesn’t live here anymore

Music and Freedom by Zoë Morrison

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(My apologies this isn’t available in the US, not even on Kindle, though maybe there’s an audiobook? That’s never happened to me before!) I’ve struggled a bit with my review writing since about November last year, letting them slide just a little too long after I’ve finished the books and then letting my perfectionism slow me down once I do finally get around to writing. I get caught up, and then BAM! I’m four reviews behind again. That’s no place to be with a book […]

In the immortal words of Dorothy Zbornak, “If you have to ask, it does not matter.”

Why I Am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell

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I’ve never been the type to read more than one book at a time, but earlier this year, I decided I should both spend less time online and read more poetry and philosophy and mythology and the like. I kept one book on my nightstand to read before bed, another by my desk to read in downtime during work instead of picking up my phone. And it worked! I’ve spent much less time online and more time reading, but this success also led to an […]

I go down into black water. It is dark and silent, but not — never, any more — deserted.

Gnomon by Nick Harkaway

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After a bit of a slow start to the year, my reading took off. I finished seven books in three weeks and started to entertain the possibility of an elusive Double Cannonball. Then two things happened: I found a renewed sense of dedication and spent more of my time actually writing — FINALLY — and I also decided it was time to tackle Nick Harkaway’s monster of a book, Gnomon. Farewell, Double Cannonball. Maybe someday . . . In the not-too-distant future the UK has […]

Sometimes, you just have to suck it up and write the damned review

Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta

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I’ve put off this review far too long, and though I could just skip it, I don’t want to punk out when the reviewing gets tough. I really wanted to like Chinelo Okparanta’s Under the Udala Trees, as it came highly recommended and was written by an African lesbian, a voice I haven’t heard before, but this book really didn’t work for me. That said, I didn’t dislike it enough to hate-review it, so I’m stuck in a kind of mushy middle of blah. Ijeoma […]

Damn, she’s good

The Sudden Appearance of Hope by Claire North

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Reading ClaireBadger’s review of 84K reminded me of how much I enjoyed Claire North’s The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August last year, and I was inspired to move another of her novels to the top of my TBR list. I’m happy to say I was not disappointed, as The Sudden Appearance of Hope was every bit as much mind-bending fun. As Hope says on the first page, the world began to forget her when she was sixteen years old: first her teachers, then her […]



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