Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time
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About GentleRain

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Your jack of all trades eccentric. Knows a little about a lot and a lot about a little. Tends to mainly read non-fiction (history, true crime, old gossip, etc), SF/F, horror, graphic novels, "genre" books. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: GentleRain's Quick Questions interview.)

GentleRain's Reviews:

“I was the kid with the shackle clamped around his wrist:” King’s Latest Doorstopper

Fairy Tale by Stephen King

November 6, 2022 by GentleRain Leave a Comment

I’ve read almost all of the King oeuvre so was excited to see this at 30% off at Target. He’s known as a master storyteller for a reason, and I sped through this in a few days. Over the last few years he’s been mainly playing around with crime novels and thrillers, so this pastiche/homage to classic fairy tales and America’s foundational genre writers like Burroughs, Lovecraft, and Baum was an interesting change of pace. He’s only really written one other fantasy-type novel (Eyes of […]

Filed Under: Fantasy, Fiction, Horror Tagged With: #fantasy, coming of age novel, horror lite, pastiche, Stephen King

GentleRain's CBR14 Review No:126 · Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Horror · Tags: #fantasy, coming of age novel, horror lite, pastiche, Stephen King ·
Rating:
· 0 Comments

“Olive’s not a hundred dollar bill. There are going to be people in her life who don’t like her.”

Act by Kayla Miller

Clash by Kayla Miller

November 4, 2022 by GentleRain Leave a Comment

I continue my slow acquisition of this series through random bookstore visits with Act and Clash. The series follows Olive as she learns various important lessons in middle school about friendship and standing up for what’s right. In Act, Olive finds out that some kids are unable to go on field trips because their parents can’t afford the extra cost. She decides to run for student council and this causes some turmoil in her friendships and requires her to learn how to get her message […]

Filed Under: Children's Books, Graphic Novels/Comic Books Tagged With: drama, economic injustice, friendships, graphic novels, Kayla Miller, middle grade

GentleRain's CBR14 Review No:125 · Genres: Children's Books, Graphic Novels/Comic Books · Tags: drama, economic injustice, friendships, graphic novels, Kayla Miller, middle grade ·
Rating:
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“No one ever believes me when I tell them my uncle Earl owns a museum.”

The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher

November 1, 2022 by GentleRain Leave a Comment

This is very readable and I’m glad I picked it up randomly at Barnes & Noble, but it didn’t live up to my hopes. I enjoyed Paladin’s Grace so much that I figured I’d see how Kingfisher did at horror. The Hollow Places follows Kara as she tries to recover from her recent divorce. She comes back to her small hometown to live with her uncle, who runs the Wonder Museum, full of taxidermy, Bigfoot memorabilia, and a picture of the Pope made of sunflower […]

Filed Under: Fiction, Horror Tagged With: body horror, family and friendship, family ties, horror, interdimensional horror, mother daughter relationships, t kingfisher

GentleRain's CBR14 Review No:123 · Genres: Fiction, Horror · Tags: body horror, family and friendship, family ties, horror, interdimensional horror, mother daughter relationships, t kingfisher ·
Rating:
· 0 Comments

A Great Collection of Short Horror Stories

Full Throttle by Joe Hill

November 1, 2022 by GentleRain Leave a Comment

Any book I buy twice is a good one, and Full Throttle lived up to my recollections as fast-paced, fun reading. This book collects of a bunch of Joe Hill’s short stories, and it’s a great representation of his work. Two stories in here are co-written with his father, but the bulk of the collection is Hill’s work alone, and he really knows how to write. Someone once said that Hill writes better King than King does, which is debatable, but I tore through this […]

Filed Under: Fiction, Horror, Short Stories Tagged With: horror, joe hill, short stories

GentleRain's CBR14 Review No:122 · Genres: Fiction, Horror, Short Stories · Tags: horror, joe hill, short stories ·
Rating:
· 0 Comments

“[Books] made the nights stretch out, they made thoughts unfurl, out from the small pool of light cast by my bedside lamp, into the night and out over the prairie…”

Epilogue by Will Boast

November 1, 2022 by GentleRain Leave a Comment

Epilogue is a grief memoir, as Will Boast’s mother, brother and father all die in quick succession while he is in college. The book focuses mostly on his relationship with his father and the discovery that there Boast has two half-brothers from his father’s prior marriage. The opening chapter where he describes his father’s death is haunting and very compelling writing, as his father’s life-long refusal to complain or show pain results in him refusing to call for help and dying alone in his car […]

Filed Under: Biography/Memoir Tagged With: #memoir, Fathers and sons, grief, secret family, Will Boast

GentleRain's CBR14 Review No:121 · Genres: Biography/Memoir · Tags: #memoir, Fathers and sons, grief, secret family, Will Boast ·
Rating:
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“…we never stopped longing for time to pass, to release us back into our families – or what remained of them.”

Rosie: Scenes from a Vanished Life by Rose Tremain

October 24, 2022 by GentleRain 1 Comment

This is a very good but very sad memoir about Rose Tremain’s emotionally neglectful childhood growing up in post-war England. After her mother and father get divorced, she is sent off at age ten to a boarding school, compounding the neglect she had already faced. Her mother Jane also went through a traumatic abandonment at boarding school and seems to have been incapable of connecting to Tremain and her siblings. Jane is focused on only her own pleasure, as she gets remarried to a wealthy […]

Filed Under: Biography/Memoir Tagged With: #memoir, boarding school, emotional neglect, mother daughter relationships, Rose Tremain

GentleRain's CBR14 Review No:120 · Genres: Biography/Memoir · Tags: #memoir, boarding school, emotional neglect, mother daughter relationships, Rose Tremain ·
Rating:
· 1 Comment
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