Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About octothorp

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I buy books faster than I can read them. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: octothorp's Quick Questions interview.)

octothorp's Reviews:

Florida Gothic

This Is Not My Beautiful Life by Victoria Fedden

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I’ve read that the Florida Man archetype is due in large part to police blotters being unrestricted in that state compared to others, but I have to say, it really seems like Florida is the USA’s very own Night Vale. I just reviewed The Orchid Thief and said it was basically Tiger King as written by the New Yorker; this is Tiger King mixed with Say Anything as written by Us Weekly. We find Victoria Fedden eight months pregnant and staying with her mother while […]

Deja Vu

In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware

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Reading Ruth Ware’s debut novel, I had a creeping sensation of unease. Which, you know, makes sense in a whodunnit where we’re trying to establish who’s responsible for the murder committed on a weekend away in the woods. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the deja vu of realizing you’ve read something VERY similar.  I don’t think that Lucy Foley’s The Hunting Party rises to the level of plagiarism, but there are some striking resemblances. Sure, any mystery is going to […]

If you liked Tiger King…

The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean

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It’s a testament to Susan Orlean that she can make any subject seem interesting, but she didn’t have to work that hard with John Laroche. He’s the spiritual predecessor of Joe Exotic, a toothless obsessive known for big-picture ideas improperly realized who, with members of the Florida Seminole tribe, was arrested for taking bromeliads and orchids out of protected land in the Everglades to create a greenhouse business as a moneymaker for the natives. His main objective is to cultivate the Ghost Orchid, an orchid […]

Just because it’s good doesn’t mean I’m keeping it.

The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult

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This is the best book I’ve thrown in the resale pile so far. It was good. Very good. So good I debated keeping it. But this is definitely in the “glad I read this once, never putting myself through it again” pile. Sage, our imperfect protagonist of the frame tale, is a reclusive baker who befriends an old man in the grief support group she attends to deal with the loss of her mother. A car accident three years prior has left Sage permanently scarred […]

Mental archaeology

Unthinkable by Meghan Daum

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Like many of us currently trapped at home, I’m reevaluating what I need or want. Nothing like having to pick up after a three year old whose greatest joy is to undo all his parents’ work to want to reduce the number of things entropy incarnate can rearrange. So that means that in addition to my full bookcase of unread books getting their time to shine, the box of books that I pulled from my bookshelf to reread and reassess their keep-ability is in the […]

Well at least this isn’t apocalyptic

Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano

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SIGH. So this book is good, it’s really good. BUT CAN I HAVE A BOOK ABOUT HAPPY PUPPIES DURING THIS CHAOS? Like, every book I’ve read lately has been heartbreaking, and this is no exception. It’s fairly telling that my review is “whew, only a plane full of people died instead of threatening the whole world.” We follow Edward, the sole survivor of a plane crash that has killed his entire nuclear family, and his acclimation to life after. Napolitano writes believably about Edward’s depression, […]



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