Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About lowercasesee

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I've been told I have a reading problem. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: lowercasesee's Quick Questions interview.)

lowercasesee's Reviews:

We’re all obsessed with this, right?

Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

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Like, 100%, right? I’m in a Slack group and all the book club channel can talk about is this book so then it was on Kindle sale and I don’t even like romance but whatevs I bought it and then it was just supposed to be a mindless book in between Big Important books from the library but fuck it I wanted to read Red, White & Royal Blue ALL THE TIME because this book? Is the most adorable thing in the world. McQuiston manages to balance pop culture […]

I read this one too slow

The Book of Delights by Ross Gay

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This is all on me. I read this too slow and it returned itself to the library before I could jot down my highlighted lines. I am not a digital highlighter AT ALL but I flagged at least four spots in here because the language was just that damn good and now they’re GONE. I read this slow because, well, I wasn’t sure I was going to finish it. I was about 40% through and just like “Ugh, okay, I’ll make it halfway, that’s good […]

The short story as an interlude

Sabrina and Corina by Kali Fajardo-Anstine

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I must just have not been reading the right short stories because ever since I finally got around to How Long Till Black Future Month I have found my gear. Sabrina & Corina is one of the most fantastic story collections you will find out there right now, I fell into this book and never looked to come up for air. There is something about the way Fajardo-Anstine weaves her stories that makes them feel less separate, if that makes sense. This isn’t a disparate assembly of […]

The power in small stories

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

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Between this and Normal People, Sally Rooney really excels in the small spaces. They’re just stories about people, removed even from extraordinary circumstances. The background isn’t war or conflict or some other extraordinary event, the background is just life. The cynic in me wonders if this isn’t because Rooney is so young that small stories about young people are what’s currently in her wheelhouse, but even if that is the case, very few young authors could tell these stories with half the care and depth that […]

Stick with it, trust me

Trust Exercise by Susan Choi

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I struggled with this book for really longer than I should have, but I am so so glad I stuck with it. At about the halfway point it reveals itself to be a Russian nesting doll of ideas and I don’t want to talk too much about it and give too much away, but yes, please, bear through the uncomfortableness of the first half to experience to awe of the second that lets you see the genius of the whole. Trust Exercise puts theater kids […]

The book that reignited a genre

Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

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There was a time where it really felt like just everyone and their mother was reading this book and talking about this book. And there’s good reason – it’s absolutely fascinating  and Larson does an incredible job of making cold historical facts absolutely fascinating. I could be wrong, but the modern idea of narrative nonfiction really started here, carried through largely by Larson himself. Fifteen years later, the book doesn’t hold up quite as well as I remember. Larson leans hard into “this is all […]



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