Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Theme is Adventure

Best Women's Erotica of the Year, Volume 6 by Rachel Kramer Bussel

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I didn’t entirely consider that I would be writing a review of erotica for the Cannonball Read audience when I requested Rachel Kramer Bussel’s Best Women’s Erotica of the Year, Volume 6 from NetGalley. I just thought about how much I wanted to read it. I got a copy of this arc from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I don’t generally review erotica because to do so in a meaningful way would get rather more revelatory than I usually do. With an anthology […]

A Peculiar Collection of Stories Both Surreal and Distinctly Human

What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi

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It’s been a minute since I’ve read a collection of short stories (or really, short stories in general), so I figured it might be worth a little revisit with Oyeyemi’s collection in What is Not Yours is Not Yours. Once again, I find my personal experience with short stories to be a bit of a mixed bag, not to mention how with any collection put together there are going to be those that are favored and those that are not. For the most part, these […]

“While I was killing him, I had to wipe my mouth with my sleeve every now and then because I couldn’t stop salivating.”

Mars by Asja Bakić

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Anything can become normal, if you continue to stick through it. War, murder, cults, doppelgängers, being deported to Mars- whatever world you are dropped into becomes your world. Asja Bakić is a master of normalcy in abnormal times and places. Her short story collection, Mars, is filled to the gills with the weird becoming common place. I was originally drawn to this collection for less than academic reasons: it is short and it has a pretty corner! I was looking to race through my Bingo card, […]

Her Body and Other Parties

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

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So, I picked this us like…three years ago?  And the first three stories were SO MUCH, that I put it down, and then it sat on my “currently reading” list for a long time, and finally I thought, let’s just do it.  It’s October!  Time for some creepy short stories. These are creepy, but not quite horror.  They are visceral, gothic-adjacent.  Machado’s style is so abrupt and beautiful and precise, but precise like someone is describing something that you can’t quite see, until you see […]

Everyone is Doing Their Bit in Their Own Way

Bisexual Unicorn Vampires Teach Me the Importance of the Vampire Cough by Chuck Tingle

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Well, I don’t think I could have picked a more tonally different read for my No Money review than my Money one. Chuck Tingle is famous for his eclectic romance shorts between people and exotic cryptic species, people and inanimate objects, and even people and abstract concepts. Recently, he has been inundated with requests for Coronavirus related erotica — which he has refused to do, on the grounds that he doesn’t want to write about things or events that are harming people. So instead, Chuck […]

far from the confines of any one Room…

Astray by Emma Donoghue

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not my best title, it’s true- but also not the best collection. I picked this up while looking for different work from Donoghue, and while it was not what I wanted it was a (mostly) pleasant way to spend my time. The idea is cool; this collection is filled with (often very) short stories divided into three “chapters”: Departures, In Transit, and Arrivals and Aftermaths. Each story is set in a different time; most are within the 19th century, but two creep into the 20th […]



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