Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

We don’t know whether this is a dream or a memory.

Space Invaders by Nona Fernandez

The Promise by Silvina Ocampo

The Fool by Anne Serre

A Short, Sharp Shock by Kim Stanley Robinson

Welcome to America by Linda Bostrum Knausgaard

Invisible Kingdom vol 1 by G Willow Wilson

Beyonders vol 1 by Paul Jenkins

Infinite Dark vol 1 by Ryan Cady

by Leave a Comment

Space Invaders – 4/5 stars This short novel from Chile takes places in late 70s and early 80s in Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship in which tens of thousands of dissenters were placed in concentration camps, killed outright, or both, often having their entire existence bureaucratically eradicated in the process. It was common practice bodies to be burned or dumped in the ocean as well. This novel is a novel of childhood as kids through a main narrator try to make sense of their world. […]

Happy Birthday. Your thirteenth is important. Maybe your first really public day.

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace

by Leave a Comment

A book that certainly delivers upon the promise of its title. I remember a few years ago when Adelle Waldman’s The Affairs of Nathaniel P. came out and we were meant to take it as a savage takedown of fuckboi culture, and then when I read it, not only did I not think that Nate was all that bad, I didn’t see the book as a takedown so much as reading the shift in the educated, white, Liberal masculinity in urban spaces. This book is most definitely […]

Okay I love short stories now

How Long Till Black Future Month by N.K. Jemisin

by 2 Comments

It really has taken me this long to get short stories so god bless my library because I never would have gotten here without it. I’d been anti-short story because I missed the novel-length follow through on plots or people or places, but I’m now pro-short story because I can pick up a book at any time, read a chapter, and then put it away for however long I want. Not that I’d want to do that with this book because Jemisin is like GRRM for me […]

There’s a Reason for Every Relationship

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers by Yiyun Li

by 1 Comment

A collection of ten short stories, this is a poignant and honest look at the lives of utterly ordinary people that play out in front of cultural constraints and political intrusions. Topics like the relationship between husband and wife, filial duty, the families that we make ourselves, and the societal expectations that put shackles on even the most human experiences are explored in a somber but touching way. Almost all of these stories are amazing, and it’s hard for me to pick a favourite. The […]

After finishing it, I’m okay with the price I paid

What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi

by Leave a Comment

I had this on my Amazon wishlist after seeing it reviewed somewhere (maybe ElCicco’s review from 2016?) and promptly forgot about it.  Then I went to visit the Dollar Tree (the best dollar store chain in NJ, and you can fight me on that) and what do I see but a very familiar cover.  I was surprised to see an actual (hardcover) book in the dollar store that I actually had intended to buy at some point, so I snatched it up!   This is a […]

“She would’ve been a good woman,” said The Misfit, “if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.” (Bingo!)

A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor

by Leave a Comment

This is my first O’Connor, which seems strange as a Catholic raised in the American South (maybe if I had gone to a catholic school?) and it is both fascinating and darkly comic, which I don’t know that I was ready for. O’Connor is asking the reader what does it mean to be good? What does it mean to be moral? Those questions are the heart of A Good Man is Hard to Find, and then doubled down by making it the title piece of […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo