Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Hello Darkness My Old Friend

The Lock-Up by John Banville

Alles Wat er Was by Hanna Bervoets

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Two relatively short, easy reads this week, neither of them terribly cheerful! The Lock-Up (John Banville) *** 1950s Dublin. A young woman is discovered in a rented garage, sitting in her car with the windows closed and a hose connecting the exhaust to the interior. The police are quick to call it suicide, though no note is found. But pathologist Quirke, still in mourning over the loss of his beloved wife, soon discovers that the young woman was probably sedated before being placed inside the […]

“The problem with family is that they know where all the levers are that make you move. They’re usually the ones who installed the levers in the first place.”

A House with Good Bones by T. Kingfisher

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I picked this book up for a  read along with a few friends and it’s a great one for the season: one part silly, one part spooky, one part WAIT WHAT?! The general consensus from the group was that we liked it, but maybe didn’t love it and that it was a bit of a slow build, some felt it was too slow, I was along for the ride. Someone who had read other Kingfisher novels was surprised at how differernt it was in tone, […]

I haven’t finished but still had thoughts

Mutant Cats, Volume 1 by Matthew Medney, Morgan Rosenblum, and Alex Arizmendi

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I hadn’t even finished the first five pages of Mutant Cats, Volume 1 and I was wondering if I should finish it. Or even if I could. There were some nasty images on those first few pages and I was just finishing up a tuna sandwich, so things in the ol’ tum were becoming not happy (totally ruined my lunch,  too). Yet, I said, give it a chapter.  Well, I finished that chapter and decided I’ll do my best to finish it as it had […]

Careful what you wish for

The Knitting Witch: A Spellbinding Tale of Magic and Mischief by Norma Kassirer

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Ivy Lou is a wealthy child who is given everything by her overindulgent parents, in The Knitting Witch: A Spellbinding Tale of Magic and Mischief. However, if they say “no” or even hesitate, Ivy Lou has three tantrums she can use to get her way. One day a witch (hence the title) shows up, promising the one thing Ivy Lou’s parents cannot buy (friends for Ivy Lou). But as the woman is a witch, things do not go as hoped and Ivy Lou gets a […]

A different kind of horror

Audition by Ryu Murakami

Piercing by Ryu Murakami

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Audition (1997) – 4 stars I think I talked about this in a past review, but I was a huge movie buff in college. My girlfriend at the time and I particularly loved Japanese horror, and this was the height of that particular genre, with Ringu, Ju-on, and a slew of other movies. One of the better films of the era was a quiet little movie called Audition. I loved it so much, I bought the book and first read it close to twenty years […]

A nice anthology of mildly gruesome stories

Revenge by Yoko Ogawa

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This is an anthology of interconnected short stories that takes place in Tokyo in an indeterminate time, but presumably sometime in the 1990s. Each of the stories (of which there are eleven) is from the perspective of a different character, and shares some commonality to the story that immediately precedes it. In “Afternoon at the Bakery”, for instance, the narrator enters a bakery for some strawberry shortcake. It’s her son’s birthday who (it is revealed) is now dead. That is what his last birthday cake […]



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