Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Read it, like a child, into the night

Melmoth by Sarah Perry

by Leave a Comment

Helen Franklin is an English ex-pat in Prague on a mission to penalize herself for a mysterious past. However she cannot avoid the friendship of Karel and Thea and for a while she is almost happy. Then Melmoth appears. Melmoth is the an old tale of the wanderer, the one who is there to witness when no one else is and what she sees is the depravity, the loss the despair. Melmoth is just a myth, or so it seems until Karel gets a letter […]

…if It Wasn’t For You Meddling Kids…

Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero

by 2 Comments

  The show Scooby Doo holds a very special place in my heart in all of its iterations because I love it just that much. Fun fact, I saw that there was going to be a Scooby Doo/Supernatural crossover show and having watched no Supernatural at all, I watched 13 straight seasons so I could know what was going on.  The joke was on me, because I didn’t know that there were stand alone episodes and that Scoobynatural was one of them.  It’s fine, I fell […]

What to do when both the title and the back blurb are lies

John Dies at the End by David Wong

by 4 Comments

I’m not sure what I was expecting when I picked up John Dies at the End. I think maybe a little bit of Welcome to Night Vale mixed with Sandman Slim, and possible a bit of Men in Black. This book is not any of those things, either in combination or alone. I should also admit that I have not seen the movie, don’t remember having heard of it before, and definitely have no plans to ever watch it now. I did not really enjoy […]

My First Post and My Favorite Stephen King Novel

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Steven King

by 3 Comments

I love re-reading books and one of the Steven King novels that I love most is “The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon”. To many, it might seem quite boring as it mainly features a young girl lost in the woods. But to me, that’s the best aspect of it. A young female fighting for survival, who must find the inner strength to keep going no matter what, is crack cocaine to me. Kinda reminds me of the first season of The Walking Dead – slow […]

true story: my parents were called in for a meeting with the guidance counselor when I wrote a poem about bog sacrifices in third grade

Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss

by Leave a Comment

…which I learned about from reading Spider magazine. Ghost Wall kicks off with a young woman being led to the peaty gloom before snapping back to a modern teenager forced to reenact the Iron Age with her father and the massive chip on his shoulder. Clocking in at a mere 130 pages, Ghost Wall bridges the expanse from ancient Britons to bored college students. Sarah Moss’s prose is sparse but lush; months worth of meditations shift and shimmer through the fog of just 130 pages.   A theme reigns supreme throughout […]

You expect me to jump up on board with you and ride off into your delusional sunset

Damsel by Elana K. Arnold

by 17 Comments

We open on a young man on a quest. He is the prince of his land and his father has just died. To claim his kingship, he must travel to the grey land, defeat a dragon, and bring back a damsel for his bride. This is how things have always been in Harding. The farther dies and to claim his place, the son must complete this rite. Tradition in Harding decrees that the prince can be give no help to defeat his dragon, not even […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo