Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Armageddon was a fire in the harbor, a box delivered on a cold day. It wasn’t one great tragedy, but ten million tiny ones, and everyone faced theirs alone.”

The Warm Hands of Ghosts: A Novel by Katherine Arden

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They are fighting their war in the last world, but we’re dying in this one. January 1918. Laura Iven, a revered field nurse, wounded when the Germans bombed the munitions depot her field hospital was next to, is discharged from the medical corps, leaving behind a brother still fighting in Flanders. Months later, back home in Halifax, Canada, Laura lives assisting three elderly mediums after the deaths of her parents. On the night that Pim Shaw, a young widow seeking to connect with her son, […]

“There’s something peaceful about your worst fear coming true.” CBRBINGO – Work

Bat Eater by Kylie Lee Baker

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I’ve been looking forward to reading this book since it was published, and it didn’t disappoint. Bat Eater* is about Cora Zheng, a half Chinese, half white young woman living in NYC as the pandemic kicks off. She lives with her sister, Delilah, with whom she has a troubled relationship. Delilah is full Chinese, and they are half sisters, and Cora has been in her shadow their whole lives. The opening chapter kicks off the book appropriately with Delilah’s violent death on a subway station platform. […]

Multigenerational missing girls and ripple effects

Salt Bones by Jennifer Givhan

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Salt Bones fulfills the “family” square on CBR17 Bingo. Actual rating: 4.5 stars Salt Bones is a story of myth, which missing girls matter, and cycles of generational pain. I was really excited to read this based on the premise of Persephone and Demeter story through a Mexicali perspective, and this was great. There are so many different mother-daughter dynamics explored, and all of them dealing with different kinds of trauma. The Veracruz family seems to be cursed because twenty years ago Mal’s younger sister, […]

Creepy

The Night Guest by Hildur Knútsdóttir

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Best for: Those who like a pretty horrific psychological tale. CONTENT NOTE: There are cats that start out alive but are not alive at the end of the book. In a nutshell: Iðunn is exhausted but doesn’t know why, and doctors aren’t helping. But we eventually know what is going on … sort of. Worth quoting: N/A Why I chose it: I somehow ended up following author Knútsdóttir on BlueSky. No idea when that came about. But I’d been wanting to read this since she […]

Folktales and cycles through history

Songs for Ghosts by Clara Kumagai

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Songs for Ghosts fulfills the “culture” square on CBR17 Bingo. Songs for Ghosts is a beautiful, tragic story of the power of stories and love, as well as the way past choices can create cycles throughout time. I’m unfamiliar with it, but in the afterword the author talks about Songs for Ghosts being a retelling of Madama Butterfly opera by Puccini where Cio-Cio-San has more agency than just the reductive submissive wife trope. Adam is a seventeen year old whose boyfriend just broke up with […]

Anarchy in the UK

Once Was Willem by M.R. Carey

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CBR Bingo: ‘O’ I bought Once Was Willem by M.R. Carey a few months ago, essentially on a whim (I liked the title and the cover). I’d vaguely heard of the author (he wrote The Girl with All the Gifts, a book/movie that has been recommended to me before, but that I’ve never actually gotten around to reading/watching yet), but I was basically going in blind. I picked it up recently because it’s a short standalone novel, which I like to read to break up bigger […]



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