Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Mors irrumat omnia. Death fucks us all.”

Ninth House (Alex Stern, #1) by Leigh Bardugo

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I don’t know, I kind of feel like my brain has been hit by a tornado. This book was a lot. In a good way. But still, a lot. I’m not quite sure I’ve finished processing, but I definitely enjoyed the ride. This is just going to be one of those books that will sit in my brain and sort of gel there, and then eventually I’ll read it again and everything will just click. I’ll probably up my rating to five stars; I usually […]

“How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads; to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams.”

Dracula by Bram Stoker

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I don’t have the time or energy to write as much or as deeply as I would like to about this strange, 100+ year old book, so I’m just going to settle with posting some brief thoughts below. Somehow I managed to make it out of years and years of schooling, with two English degrees, without reading this book. Which is right up my alley! All that discussion of monsters and things that are taboo swathed in metaphor. I love that shit. When I first […]

“Love is desire sustained by unfulfillment.”

The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter

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While I like to think of myself as generally well-read there are definite gaps in the more classic authors of certain genres. Authors I enjoy, including Neil Gaiman, have pointed to Angela Carter as an immense influence on their own work. Thankfully someone had gifted The Bloody Chamber & Other Stories to me a few years ago. The stories in the collection share a theme of being closely based upon fairytales or folk tales and Carter toys with Gothic fiction and gender, utilizing classic Gothic […]

My favorite of the series so far.

The Sandman, Vol. 4: Season of Mists by Neil Gaiman

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My favorite since the first one. It’s been over thirty years since this was published, and it still managed to do things that surprised me. Morpheus, or Dream the Endless, has been informed that consigning his human lover Nada to hell for 10,000 years for the crime of rejecting him and wounding his pride was a not great thing to do, so he sets out to make things as right as he can, which means once again descending into hell and facing Lucifer. He makes […]

Coming of Age with Hurricanes and Ghosts and Jessie’s Girl

Joyland (Hard Case Crime) by Stephen King

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Given the book’s pulpy cover with a buxom redhead, I thought Joyland would be some kind of hard-boiled exploitationy romp. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it’s actually a quiet,  classic Stephen King-type coming of age story, albeit one for twenty-somethings instead of kids. The story swirls around events at an independent amusement park in 1970s North Carolina called Joyland. The park has a mysterious old owner, always impeccably dressed (I pictured Atlanta Falcons’ club owner Arthur Blank) with a twinkle in his eye. It […]

Reading This During the Holidays Was Probably a Mistake

We Are Monsters by Brian Kirk

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Please note that I received this book via NetGalley. This did not affect my rating or review. Eh. I tried to get into this. I gave up halfway through and just grudgingly finished this thing over a period of like four weeks. Bah. It had a great premise, it just got boring to me halfway through. And then I kept finding other books to read instead. Maybe if I hadn’t started King’s “The Institute” (nope still not done) and seen some similar themes here, it […]



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