Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Montserrat had three loves. One was horror movies. The other was her car. The third was Tristán.” CBR BINGO – Disco

Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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Okay, so this rating makes it seem like I wasn’t a huge fan of this book, but I liked it, I really did! It’s been over a month now, and it’s still in my head and it feels good, hasn’t soured, haven’t forgotten it. But I had a bit of a hard time getting through it while reading, and the magic system was a bit too woobly for me. This is fantasy horror book set in Mexico City in the 1990s, following Montserrat, a film […]

Let’s get out of here. You’re free from that waffletart now.

Hair and Heart: An MM Fairy Tale Romance by Rhys Everly

Pictures of You by Leta Blake

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Hair and Heart: An MM Fairy Tale Romance By Rhys Everly Val is in a conservatorship. He is a pop musician who has been under the care of his uncle since teenage Val blacked out during a psychotic episode and set fire to his home, which resulted in the death of both of his parents. Since that episode, he has been under his uncle Fred’s care. Val is in his early twenties and is tired of making the same generic pop ballads that made him […]

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The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman

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Earlier this year I reviewed Cyberville, Stacy Horn’s recounting of starting an online community in 1990s New York. That got me on a 90s entertainment kick in music, movies, and other books. (To be honest, I’m always on a 90s kick in music.) Klosterman’s The Nineties was an obvious followup read. While a lot of my pop culture interests are Chuck Klosterman-adjacent, this was the first time I’ve read one of his books. If his other reads are like this one, I’ll put them on […]

“If there’s a purpose to life it’s to love and communicate.”

Cyberville: Clicks, Culture, and the Creation of an Online Town by Stacy Horn

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A tip of the hat for tech & culture writer Joanne McNeil for mentioning this book in her excellent Lurking. Cyberville is the story of New York City’s 1990s “online salon,” Echo. Stacy Horn founded Echo and authored this book. However,  the book features clips of lengthy discussions from Echo and its Echoids, so in effect the book is collectively authored. As are all online communities. That’s really what this book is about – the co-creation of online communities. While it was written in 1998, […]

They Have Everything At…

The Mall by Megan McCafferty

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Normally, I don’t go for bildungsroman tales. I have no desire to relive my younger days through fictional surrogates, nor do I often find the protagonists interesting enough to care about. They’re all either too smart for their own good or too dumb for the purposes of entertainment. But set one in a mall in the early-90s? Now you’re speaking my language. And Megan McCafferty definitely needs to speak it because this story is stretched as thinly as possible. It works because of the goodwill […]

A Read 15 Years in the Making

Always by Ginna Gray

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You know how some books just get under your skin? Have you ever had one that has stuck around for nearly two decades and you have literally no idea why, but you can’t find your copy of the book to reread and find out? Well…let me tell you a story.   “As a rule, Meghan did not believe in running away. It simply wasn’t her nature. Whatever life dealt out, she stood her ground and stuck out her chin. In this instance, however, she was […]



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