Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

oops did I get two similar-ish books confused

The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra

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I think, if I’m being honest, that I did get this book slightly confused with Marra’s other book, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena. Which isn’t to say both books aren’t lovely and worthy of being read, just that they do share common traits. Marra writes what he knows best. I can’t fault an author for doing so, and indeed I really enjoyed both books. Perhaps on further reflection I might have enjoyed this one a tad more? In this work, a central painting–a fictional landscape by […]

An AI-assisted review experiment

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

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Edited to add this PSA: please see below for the to-be-official stance on use of AI in Cannonball–tl;dr the CBR board has determined based on this experience and like, *waves* all of this, that AI reviews don’t fit the ethos of what CBR is all about. I can attest to this–I probably spent 2-3x as long end to end doing this one review, but felt about a tenth as satisfied as I usually do writing a review! Hopefully everyone felt the extreme experimentation vibe of […]

It Runs in the Family

Everything My Mother Taught Me by Alice Hoffman

Can You Feel This? by Julie Orringer

The Lion's Den by Anthony Marra

Zenith Man by Jennifer Haigh

The Weddings by Alexander Chee

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Another year, another onslaught of bits and bobs to keep me from sitting down and giving my undivided attention to a hefty book! Everything My Mother Taught Me 3/5 Dang it Alice Hoffman, misadventures at lighthouses are my catnip! Lighthouse Keeper was my dream job when I was younger- big thanks to Ahab’s Wife- it’s a  lonesome and perilous career but also pretty cool! I was a huge Hoffman fan in high school, but I drifted away over the last 15 years or so. I dipped […]

The Tsar of Love and Techno AND ALSO HALF CANNONBALL!

The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra

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I loved A Constellation of Vital Phenomenon, so I was excited to see Anthony Marra had written another one.  I actually finished this book like two years ago but then forgot to write a review?  So I did a re-read to make my HALF CANNONBALL WOOOOO!  I haven’t met my Cannonball goal since 2015, so I am just gonna go have some champagne now thanks. *sips champagne* Anyway, this is a great book!  I love Marra’s writing style–he’s the kind of writer that makes me […]

A great book about people struggling through a recent war

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“Only one entry supplied an adequate definition, and she circled it with red ink, and referred to it nightly. Life: a constellation of vital phenomena–organization, irritability, movement, growth, reproduction, adaptation.” (184) A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (2014) by Anthony Marra follows a number of characters living in a small, mountain village of Chechnya from 1994 through 2004. The story jumps around between characters and time, sometimes even up to the 1940’s to show an older character’s earlier life. Although it’s not difficult to follow, the […]

You should read this novel about Chechnya.

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This is a superb book.  “A Constellation of Vital Phenomena” has a main storyline: In a tiny village in Chechnya in 2004, Akhmed, an incompetent doctor, takes his neighbor Dokka’s daughter, Havaa, in search of safety after her father has been disappeared and their house burned down.  They walk to the hospital, where a tough woman named Sonja is the head surgeon–and one one of two employees.  Sonja has enough to worry about without taking on the care of an 8-year old girl, and when she’s not amputating limbs, she’s […]



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