Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

things that go “scoff” in the night

Bunny by Mona Awad

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This book was praised to high-heavens, thus giving me high hopes. It is all over “best of” lists, there are tons of snarky little quips in write-ups, and the paperback features pull-quotes from Margaret Atwood and Karen Russell. I was ready to be ruined by this book… but. …it fell flat, as so many pumped-up things often do. Samantha, an unreliable narrator if ever there was one, is a post-grad MFA fellow at Warren College, a told-but-not-shown sPoOoOoKy college somewhere in New England. There’s some […]

“I think ‘bone frenzy’ might be a term open to coarse misinterpretation, personally.”

Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

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I started screaming within the first 60 pages. This was good screaming, mind you. Surprise-party-on-a-rollercoaster-with-Elvis-in-space screaming. Everything that I had learned and loved from Gideon the Ninth exploded in my face, leaving a cloud of gore and pure insanity- and you know what? I was into it. Big time. If you have yet to read Gideon (WHY?!) then DO NOT READ THIS WRITE UP. Do not read anything about Harrow, do not read Gideon‘s book jacket, and do not waste any more time! Go go go! Our Lady Harrowhawk is, well, […]

cbr12bingo – Cannonballer Says

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

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Y’all really got me with this one! Bothari43 first grabbed my attention with an excellent review/cat pic combo, then Bea Pants increased my interest with promises of broad swords and dirty magazines. I don’t usually read much Science Fiction/Fantasy, but after the surprise hits of new favorite Becky Chambers (whom I would not have found without the help of Cannonball), I decided to give it a go! I was wary at first of the breakdown of Houses; I am often scared off by complex mythologies, […]

Literary Roadkill

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk

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Haunted is a series of short stories and poems, loosely related insofar as each is written from the perspective of different member of a group of degenerate sociopaths locked together in a masochistic “Writers’ Retreat”. **trigger warning** this review mentions some extreme and horrific aspects of the book, including miscarriage. The backbone of Haunted that ties each poem and short story together is a horrific three-month-long “Writers’ Retreat”. Each character with a poem and story to tell throughout the novel apparently answered a mysterious advertisement […]

“The moral of that story, I think, is that being poor will kill you.”

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

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It happened again. I excitedly picked up a book at the store, rushed it home, then let it sit in a pile for a few months. When I finally opened it days ago I was shocked (and not shocked at all simultaneously, really) that it was an oddly appropriate collection for today’s frightening world. The first page of the book is a quote from poet Elisabeth Hewer, and it lays the roadwork for the furious march within: “god should have made girls lethal when he […]

A glistening doorknob without a door

Paradise Rot by Jenny Hval

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I picked up this book because I wanted something atmospheric. When daylight savings hits and I stop experiencing sunlight I get into these funks and all I want is deep base and prose the blurs the line between poetry and description, and narratives that aren’t but could be. I found this book on a list of books similar to Annihilation, so if you liked the atmosphere woven through that story, and want something with even less coherent narrative, this is it. You’ve found that weird […]



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