Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Horror Month 2023: #2

Holly by Stephen King

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I suppose I should address the conversation around the book before the book itself. There’s been a lot of grousing from center/center-right/right wing King fans about how political this book is. That all the villains are painted as MAGA doofuses. These comments usually have some variety of “King was never political until now!” To which I say…have you ever read Stephen King? His early books are steeped in 70s paranoia. He wrote a book about a man trying to assassinate a presidential candidate, the latter […]

Horror Month 2023: #1

Dark Hollow by John Connolly

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For October 2023, I’m going to read as many horror- and/or Halloween-themed books as I can. It’s my own personal reading challenge to clear some stuff off my shelf and engage with other stuff on my TBR list. A few years ago, there was the framework of a tweet that made the rounds saying Men will literally do X instead of go to therapy. “X” could be watching football or training for UFC or any other such thing. The roots of it were legit: men are conditioned […]

Her magic was as blunt as she was: like a nuke hidden in a birthday cake.

The Dead Take the A Train by Cassandra Khaw and Richard Kadrey

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I don’t know what prompted Cassandra Khaw and Richard Kadrey to write a book together, but I am so glad they did. I’m also very excited that there will be another book from them. The Dead Take the A Train is the first in the Carrion City duology. I saw an ad for the book a couple of days ago, and John Langan blurbed the book as “compulsively readable.” I can’t think of a better description. It was hard to put down, and even when I […]

A surprise favorite of 2023!

Black Sheep by Rachel Harrison

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Thanks to NetGalley and Berkley for the ARC. It hasn’t affected the content of my review. Okay, but wow. So straight up it’s impossible to talk about this book in any depth without giving out information that should be preserved for the reading experience. As spoiler-free as possible is the best way to go into this one. But generally, and this is as far as the synopsis goes, Vesper Wright left her strict religious community six years before the book starts, when she was almost […]

We Create Our Own Monsters

Carrie by Stephen King

The Weight of Blood by Tiffany D. Jackson

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Carrie Carrie White is a high-school student who is an outcast. She lives with her religious fanatic of a mother and is very much alone. One day, while taking a shower in gym class, she gets her first period. Since her mother never taught her about the menstrual cycle, she thinks she is dying and starts hysterically screaming and crying. The other girls find this hilarious and start throwing pads and tampons at her, jeering to “plug it up”. Then suddenly, a lightbulb explodes. The […]

Three Horror Short Story Collections

The Shores of Space by Richard Matheson

Everything's Eventual by Stephen King

Night Shift by Stephen King

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CBR15Bingo: Violence (plenty of violence here!) It’s interesting going back and doing these reviews a while after I read the books because I get to see what sticks around in my mind and what doesn’t. Say what you will about Stephen King, but his stories stay with you. There’s something about his ability to get across a strong visual image and have it embed itself in your brain forever. He really taps into something very primal with his writing, especially his earlier work. I am […]



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