Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Dance, Dance, Dance, AS IF, tomorrow we all shall die!”

Disco Witches of Fire Island: A Novel by Blair Fell

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It’s 1989 and half-Armenian Philly resident Joe Agabian is trying to get over the death of his boyfriend Eddie, who he lost two years ago to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. When his best friend Ronnie gets them jobs on Fire Island, Joe figures this is the perfect chance to finally start living again. Once there, they are taken under the wings of Larry and Howie, two older quirky and eccentric gay men who work as house cleaners for the rich of Fire Island. As Joe starts […]

Monkey Business

Ivanov by Hanna Bervoets

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It’s 1994 and student Felix van der Elsken has just arrived at JFK airport to begin his studies at an unspecified New York university. Felix is young, gay, and desperately looking for connection and a way to shape his identity. A few months after his stay, he meets a young scientist named Helena. New York in 1994 is in the throes of the AIDS-epidemic, and Helena has made it her mission to find a cure in a decidedly unorthodox fashion. Felix is toying with the […]

what happens to the torch-bearers, the candle holders, the vigil keepers?

The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai

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There is so much that I want to tell you about this book, but I won’t. I took so many notes, and placed so many scraps of paper between pages, but I do not want to ruin a single realization for you. Rebecca Makkai has crafted an intricately woven tapestry that you have to witness in its full glory; I do not want to give you a magnifying glass before you have had a chance to first witness the enormity of the project. The Great Believers hits […]

She thought that maybe, just maybe, if she was beautiful, things would get better

The House of Impossible Beauties by Joseph Cassara

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I’d heard for years that I should watch Paris is Burning, the groundbreaking documentary about the New York’s drag ball scene in the 1980’s, but I never quite got around to it for one reason or another. It wasn’t until a few years ago, when a friend told me just how much that movie influenced Rupaul’s Drag Race, that I finally forced myself to sit down and watch it. Needless to say, it’s brilliant and unforgettable, and shame on me for not watching it sooner. […]

The wrong time and medium for this book.

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The Naked Truth is the memoir of Marvelyn Brown, a young HIV activist from Nashville, TN. She contracted HIV from a boyfriend at 19, was diagnosed extremely quickly, and shot to the top of HIV activism circles. This book started out okay. Marvelyn is funny and charismatic, and very matter of fact about the bad decisions and ways of thinking that led to her contracting HIV. But honestly, this book just did not need to be a book. It’s a pretty slim paperback as it […]

“We try to make it easier for those who come after.”

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I had a goal with this book, I wanted to be able to read and review it in time for World Aids Day, which is December 1st. I have been reading some heavy hitting things of late; Between the World and Me, Rabbit-Proof Fence, and The Fifteenth Minute come immediately to mind for different reasons, but each was difficult to review in its own way, and this one is as well. In my last review I talked about how the dark times in our history […]



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