Pheagan – Cannonball Read 17

When Your Body is Your Effigy, You Burn With It

Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny by Kate Manne

June 7, 2020 by Pheagan 2 Comments

So, I have been studying philosophy for a while, and am still technically enrolled in a PhD program in a research university, although I’m not sure if I’ll stay. Down Girl by Kate Manne is the first philosophical work I’ve been able to read for a while. It kind of hurts to return to philosophy, and the why of that is complicated, but I guess it comes down to the fact that while I love philosophy, it doesn’t feel like academic philosophy loves me. […]

The Humanity of No Longer Human

No Longer Human by Dazai Osamu

April 20, 2020 by Pheagan Leave a Comment

The path that led me to reading Dazai Osamu’s No Longer Human was paved by anime. My pandemic-fueled internet immersion led me to an anime called Bungou Stray Dogs (Literary Stray Dogs), which re-imagines famous Japanese writers as seinen characters whose powers and personalities derive from the writers’ works and lives. It’s tremendously popular in Japan, Russia, and Brazil, but less so in the Anglophonic world. The second season introduces American writers, and is unsurprisingly the best-loved by the American audience. For me, it’s […]

Any Sufficiently Advanced Science Fiction is Indistinguishable from Magic

Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson

March 20, 2020 by Pheagan Leave a Comment

Once in a while you encounter a book that makes you fall so in love with it that you check an author’s bibliography and pray that it’s long enough to give you stuff to read for the rest of your life, and Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber is that book for me. Hopkinson is one of those sci fi writers that I’ve been aware of for awhile and have been meaning to read and I am ashamed it took me this long, because she just […]

Spying ain’t Glamorous, yo

The Spy Who Came In From The Cold by John LeCarre

March 3, 2020 by Pheagan 4 Comments

Here’s a clever piece of writing advice: when your plot involves your characters carrying out a plan, don’t tell us what the plan is unless it is going to fail. If it’s going to fail, the reader needs to know what it is beforehand in order to understand how it falls apart. If it’s not going to fail, then it’s pointless to explain it to your readers twice. In The Spy who Came in from the Cold, John LeCarre doesn’t tell us about Britain’s […]

Let’s Just Abolish the Prison System

American Prison by Shane Bauer

February 12, 2020 by Pheagan Leave a Comment

I’m combining Cannonball Read with another reading challenge, and have decided on this book as my true crime read. I want to address the fact that I chose this as my true crime pick. While technically it is a true book about criminals, it’s not what we think about when we think of true crime. I am familiar with true crime: I used to watch Most Wanted, I’ve seen many serial killer documentaries, and I regularly listen to My Favorite Murder. True crime tends to […]

The Women of Name of the Wind, but Particularly Denna

Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss

January 26, 2020 by Pheagan 6 Comments

Warning: spoilers abound. What follows is more of a rumination on gender that this book has provoked than a review. I also realize how using the term “the patriarchy” just kind of turns people off, it makes me sound like an irrational feminazi who is offended by the slightest of things and spends her days waiting to be angry about something. To which I say: consider the possibility that this just demonstrates what a great job misogynists have done turning the words we have to […]

Zirza on A Gothic Classic for a ReasonIt's one of those wish-you-could-read-it-again-for-the-first-time books. I loved it.
Emmalita on “It came to something when you found yourself hoping that the footsteps you heard were ghosts.”I loved the ending! I don’t think it’s been out long enough to talk about why though.
Dixie on Track Her Down by Melinda LeighI am just starting Track Her Down and I have read them all in order till now and thought I...
Roland of Gilead on How can you give us the gift of a crazy character named Rando Thoughtful and then just as suddenly take that gift away? We need to talk, Uncle Stevie.I came across this randomly years after it was written because I was searching "Random Thoughtful. But I have the...
Emmalita on “Only you, Em, would refer to heartbreak as a distraction. I think I would have a more sympathetic response if I asked to marry a bookcase.”Oh my goodness, Gallifrey was beautiful. I’m sure her mittens were gloriously murdery.

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