Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About wicherwill

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She/her. Longtime lurker, goodreads addict :D (Learn more about this Cannonballer: wicherwill's Quick Questions interview.)

wicherwill's Reviews:

Brave Existing World

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

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Boy have I been meaning to read this for a while. I even have a hardcover copy that I got from a bookstore, since it’s not readily available at any of my libraries as an eBook. I suppose the highest praise to media of this generation (or any earlier generation) is to read it and think it a bit cliché. Casablanca, for example, lurches from trope to trope and you have to remind yourself that these weren’t all tropes when the movie first came out–they were, in fact, […]

save some plot points for the next go around!

Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood

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The reason this book fell flat for me can be summed up by the author’s note at the back: This book is my hate letter to standardized testing. It’s also my love letter to neuroscience, Star Wars, women in STEM, friendships that hit rough patches but then try their best to bounce back, research assistants, interdisciplinary scientific collaborations, Elle Woods, ShitAcademicsSay, mermaids, hummingbird feeders, people who struggle with working out, and cats. It’s just…too much crammed into one novel, methinks, especially considering that Hazelwood has […]

Re-re-reads count, don’t they?

Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall

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Re-re-read in honor of Husband Material: Re-re-reading this book, especially after reading Husband Material, made me realize that it’s a five star book by me. While “Priya” the Muslim will never cease to exasperate me (to recap: Priya is a Hindu name, or more relevantly it’s not a kosher Muslim name because it is religious. While it does mean “beloved” it’s also a name used for a minor goddess, and as such would not be given to a practicing Muslim child. Google, my friend!) so much of […]

one of my favorite books of all time (favorite?), finally re-read

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

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Re-read August 2022: why yes, despite the fact that I frequently call this one of my favorite books, I haven’t re-read it ever. Don’t get me wrong–I think I’ve read parts of it over and over (Miryem and the vaults of silver, in particular) but never the full book end to end. Let’s call a spade a spade: I was scared! What if it didn’t hold up to my prior review? Written in December 2018, in my defense, almost a year (!) before JKR came out […]

will continue to read McFarlane but this wasn’t my favorite

Mad About You by Mhairi McFarlane

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CW: emotional abuse As always, McFarlane writes books that seem like they’ll be lighthearted romances. They even have the quintessential Eric-Carle-block-print-esque covers and bright primary colors that denote Romance Genre books vs romance novels (a super reductive frankly sexist delineation that I think was promulgated to help people feel “better” that what they’re reading isn’t “just” romance). But like all McFarlane books, the romance is almost secondary to a larger emotional conflict that’s been weighing on our main characters. Some thought and recollections later, though, I’m not […]

complicated feelings about a complicated book

Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American by Wajahat Ali

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This is a difficult one to parse and review for me. The blurb makes it seem like it’ll be a series of essays in the vein of other comedians, focused on what it means to be Muslim and American. That characteristic blend of humor and drama via a look at an ethnic group that faces ongoing persecution in the States. And while it’s not not that, it’s also a complicated semi-defensive recounting of Ali’s family’s legal troubles and the related fallout in their Muslim-American community in […]



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