Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“…we’re the dream that humanity creates to make sense of the shadows on the cave wall.”

American Gods: Author’s Preferred Text by Neil Gaiman

by 3 Comments

I watched the first season American Gods on Starz back in the day, and I really enjoyed it but never bothered with the rest of the series once I heard that the show runner and several stars were out of the project. I’ve had the novel on my shelf ever since, but its length (500+ pages) was a little off-putting. It’s a funny thing though that the “long” stories are often the ones that read the fastest while the “short” ones can be a slog. […]

“I Can Believe Things Where Nobody Knows If They’re True Or Not”

by 2 Comments

This book has been sitting on my kindle for a few years now, after trying to start it on a couple of occasions to no avail (mostly because I ended up getting distracted by different readings for school). But I finally got around to it! Whilst also in the midst of the tv adaptation. Which, I have to say, I am absolutely loving: it definitely expands on the world presented in the book, allowing different characters to be more developed, stick around for bigger parts […]

“Say ‘Nevermore,'” said Shadow.

by 2 Comments

This was my second time through American Gods, I have been wanting to re-read it before watching the Starz adaptation and a friend handed me his book and asked me if I wanted it. I said yes, because that means I did not have to search for my copy of it. I enjoyed the book a lot, and I liked knowing how some story lines ended because it upped the creep factor. So, because I know that there are people who have not heard of […]

Until Your Old and Broken Bones are Laid into Their Resting Place

by 1 Comment

When I was about 14 or so, my family was in Wisconsin visiting relatives. We decided to go see Taliesin, but when we got there and my parents found out that tickets were like $50 a person, or maybe they were sold out or something, we had to find something else to do last minute. We ended up at the House on the Rock. Now, if you’ve never been to the House on the Rock, I can’t do it justice with sheer words. I simply […]

Always re-read your books, people. You never know what you’ll find if you go digging back in there.

by 7 Comments

I first read American Gods when I was twenty-five. It was only my second Neil Gaiman book; I’d read Stardust several months earlier and completely fell in love with it, so it seemed like a no-brainer to give this one a go, since so many people were over the moon about it. What I found was not what I expected. The book is long and meandering. Its characters inhabit the grey areas of the world. They do gross things, immoral things, right alongside utterly mundane and profound things. They […]

The Hidden Chamber

by Leave a Comment

I got on the library queue for this book because I knew that it contains “The Monarch of the Glen,” which is the novella follow-up to American Gods. I am committed to my American Gods love, and wanted to complete my library of knowledge of all things Shadow. But this book, oh, this wonderful book. It’s a collection of some of the most beautiful poetry and short stories, in perfect Gaiman-ian language, set in dark landscapes that are undeniably his. I could pick these works […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo