Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The unbearable like-likeness of the so-so book review

My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

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I used to be much more impulsive about buying books. I kept a short wishlist mostly just bought by mood and feel and sometimes even by cover art. I’d browse through my favorite authors for something I didn’t already have, look through the new and sale racks, and I ended up with a lot of great reading . . . and a fair amount of not-so-great, but I’ve learned I can’t be pleasantly surprised without taking any risks. I also ended up with a too-homogeneous […]

“Do we settle for the world as it is, or do we work for the world as it should be?”

Becoming by Michelle Obama

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During the eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency, it became clear to me that Michelle Obama was a statuesque and beautiful woman, who was also clearly intelligent, caring and wanting to make a difference alongside her husband. Being part of the first African American Presidential couple in the White House and basically raising her young daughters more or less in the public eye cannot have been easy. Nevertheless, I didn’t know all that much about Michelle Obama, which was why this autobiography was so interesting […]

Good installment

A Crown of Lights by Phil Rickman

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Phil Rickman writes women very well. Merrily is such a wonderfully drawn character, but she isn’t the only well written woman in the book.  Rickman writes women as people, and, correctly, does not have them think or describe the women in terms of their boobs.  Rickman is also aware of how differently society would see a woman in a situation as opposed to a man.  This is used wonderfully as Merrily’s backstory makes it to social media.  Merrily’s reaction to the problem is one that […]

Is Bulgakov a Russian Edward Gorey?

Black Snow by Mikhail Bulgakov

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Mikhail Bulgakov must have had a thing for cats. He’s must have been like the Russian Edward Gorey or something because there are cats in this book.  Gorey was so well known for his cats that Tove Jansson (yes that one) wrote a story short about it. Satan, however, is of a different from than cat in this book. If Satan is in this book, he is the powers that control the theater and drive an author to the end of his rope. This isn’t […]

ooohhhh booyy is it not a love story

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

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This book was given to me as a parting gift when I left Yorkshire. I had been to Haworth to see the Brontë parsonage and I’d walked the moors behind the house and I had lived in and understood the sweet melodic dialect of West Yorkshire. All this lent the book a certain sweetness that the two horrible main characters did everything in their power to disrupt. I mean, I knew this wasn’t going to be a love story, but like ooohhhh booyy is it […]

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that it takes a huge amount of fake blood to keep a Halloween theme park running.”

Two Can Keep a Secret by Karen M McManus

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I could not have been more excited about the release of Two Can Keep a Secret. Karen McManus** — who has been such an amazing supporter of the Cannonball Read — currently has TWO books on the NYTimes bestsellers list, which is phenomenal. So many of us read — and loved — her debut novel, One of Us is Lyinglast year, and its been great to see that book is still attracting new readers and new fans. TCKAS is a mystery about missing girls in a […]



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