Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Don’t read this, no matter what your mom says! (spoilers and babbling ahead!)

Vox by Christina Dalcher

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To be clear, I can’t think of any time I would have enjoyed reading this book. But right now, with so many dumpster fires working together to start a worldwide conflagration, it was especially maddening. When a family friend (backed up by my mother, who had also read it) passed this book on with an evilly gleeful “you’re going to hate this, but it will make a fun review!”, I knew I was in for some misogynistic nonsense. And I definitely got that, but it […]

Welcome to the Creep Factor

Hide and Don’t Seek: And Other Very Scary Stories by Anica Mrose Rissi

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I stole this from another Goodreads reviewer: “Carolina Godina’s drawings will augment the creepiness of the text” (thank you Michelle Glatt). And I agree. Hide and Don’t Seek: And Other Very Scary Stories is creepy. It is spooky. It is weird. It is wild. It is horror at its best and worse. I am an adult (in age if not actions) and I was spooked out! I got chills. I thought some of the stories were downright gross. And I was amazed at the strength […]

Endless Halloween Not-So-Much-Fun

The Halloween Moon by Joseph Fink

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This weekend my goal was to read five books. I only got to two, but at least they were the Halloween ones. One of those was The Halloween Moon by Joseph Fink. It seemed like it was going to be a strong, semi-spooky Halloween romp. Some creepy trick-or-treaters, a little bit of the “you’re too old to go out trick-or-treating” and maybe I don’t know, a monster chasing them, but it is really just a bad dream. It was that. And not like that. I […]

“In the clear and steady gleam of electric lights, superstition turns to foolishness; in the crucible of the combustion engine, false beliefs are burned away.” (Bingos #9 & 10)

Vampires Never Get Old: Tales with Fresh Bite by Zoraida Cordova & Natalie Parker (editors)

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My Halloween read this year is this collection of new vampire tales edited by the team of Zoraida Cordova and Natalie Parker. I enjoy vampire stores because they offer so many different views onto the human condition, if you go looking for them. In Vampires Never Get Old: Tales with Fresh Bite Cordova and Parker, along with the assembled authors, take the time to dig in and explore these angles – with postscripts by Cordova and Parker after each story. Let’s handle individual stories in […]

“Just because you know you should, doesn’t mean that you can, stop.”

Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw

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That cover is beautiful but terrifying, which is also an apt description of this novella. It’s a haunted house story with a uniquely Japanese setting, but also an exploration of mental health. “One girl each year. Two hundred and six bones times a thousand years. More than enough calcium to keep this house standing until the stars ate themselves clean, picked the sinew from their own shining bones. All for one girl as she waited and waited. Alone in the dirt and the dark.” Five […]

Spooky times at school

Toilet-bound Hanako-kun vol.9 by Aidalro

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Spooky month is here, and I’ve found a level of spooky that’s so far been my speed. Toilet-bound Hanako-kun is a manga that is a ghost story about Nene, a girl in middle school who gets drawn into the supernatural world and shenanigans of the titular ghost who haunts the girls bathroom in spite of being a boy and being able to effectively rule the school supernatural side of the world. There’s the friend who turns out to be an exorcist, and the mysterious figure […]



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