Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Loss, Race, and Self Determination

The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans

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This book is, among many other things, about grief and loss, and about women unwilling to diminish their desires to live full and complex lives. – Author Danielle Evans I didn’t know anything about Danielle Evans’s book The Office of Historical Corrections when I bought it, but I loved the title. The book is a series of short stories and one novella. Although I earned my MFA in short fiction, I have discovered I don’t really like to read short story collections that much. Not […]

Less Well Known Works by Two of My Auto-Buy Authors

The Six Deaths of the Saint by Alix E. Harrow

Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower by Tamsyn Muir

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Alix E. Harrow is one of my favorite authors, so as part of my quest to read just about everything she’s written, I dove into her short story The Six Deaths of the Saint. It was unexpected and intense and emotional, though it’s hard to share much without getting into spoiler territory. It also contains a mix of 1st and 2nd person perspective. The story starts with the Saint of War showing up to a poor, nameless orphan and the Saint helps her become a […]

An auspicious start to CBR17

Tea With Mr. Rochester by Frances Towers

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This is a collection of short stories that I picked up last month from a great little bookstore in Cincinnati. The Cincinnati Book Bus Depot is the only bookstore in the US to sell Persephone Books, which, as per their website, “reprints neglected fiction and non-fiction, mostly by women writers and mostly dating from the mid-twentieth century.” The title of this one, Tea With Mr Rochester, is what caught my attention, and it was a surprising and delightful find. Frances Towers did not live to […]

The hope of space

Arca by Van Jensen, Jesse Lonergan (Illustrator)

All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1) by Martha Wells

Ark (Forward) by Veronica Roth

How It Unfolds (The Far Reaches, #1) by James S.A. Corey

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I often don’t have time for full epic novels, so often turn to science fiction short stories and graphic novels. They can blow my mind with intriguing premises and characters. Unintentionally I kept turning to space stories that explored future possibilities for humanity. I like how novellas and short stories allow dipping my toes into the works of some heavy hitters of sci-fi. Arca is a graphic novel written by Van Jensen and illustrated by Jesse Lonergan. In this story, we meet teenage workers who […]

“No, this had nothing to do with surrogate grannies or sex. So what was going on?”

An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good by Helene Tursten

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Sometimes you just need a collection of short stories about an old lady who uses her cleverness and people’s assumptions about the abilities of old people to punish the bad and get away with it. Plot: Maud is 88. She lives alone and has no real friends or family. Still, she’s quite content. She is healthy as an ox, has financial independence, and travels for fun for months at a time. Only now and again, she comes across some fucking piece of shit garbage person […]

Slay Ride

The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories by Martin Edwards, ed.

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This collection is from the British Library’s Crime Classics series and features 11 stories by some surprising (and surprisingly forgotten) crime writers. I found it at one of the coolest independent books stores I’ve ever seen. If you are ever in the Cincinnati area, particularly Sharonville (a northern suburb), check out out the Book Bus Depot. The store is a non-profit with the goal of raising money to promote childhood literacy and to build up classroom libraries. I met the owner when I visited, and […]



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