Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Lust and love

The Song of Aglaia by Anne Simon

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Possibly the most unsettling fairy tale you’ll read all year, The Song of Aglaia is as feminist as it is iconoclastic. Simon’s scritch-scratch textures and kids’-book-gone-awry character designs provide a perfect vehicle for her exploration of the ways lust and — more upsettingly — love destroy our ideals.– “Vulture”      CBR15Passport  Other country (from France) Having had read the Anne Simon trilogy out of order (book three first, now book one The Song of Aglaia) book three makes more sense. In three we see the son […]

A thriller based in gentrification

When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole

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When I was reading through the categories for Read Harder 2023 challenge, I was stymied by number 23: Read a social horror, mystery, or thriller novel. I had no idea what a social horror novel was. I had never heard of this genre. I did a quick search for “social horror” and found a few lists. Wouldn’t you know, it turns out I love this genre! The Only Good Indians, Lovecraft Country, Mexican Gothic (which admittedly I loved in concept but not execution) are all […]

Pinball’s lineage

Pinball: A Graphic History of the Silver Ball by Jon Chad

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  CBR15Passport Genre  The history of pinball and video games is just the start of Pinball: A Graphic History of the Silver Ball by Jon Chad. We get a little history of the country, and we get to see how things have not really changed on one hand (pinball/video games will corrupt our children! Lead them to a life of crime! It is just luck no skill!) and how they have changed (from the tabletop games to our known look for pinball machines, from France […]

The mantle of Moth Keeper

The Moth Keeper by K O' Neill

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CBR15Passport Other Country K O’Neill’s graphic novel The Moth Keeper first and foremost has gorgeous illustrations as you usually find in their works.  And it has a terribly sweet story. However, due to lack of text, sometimes things are not as “fleshed out” as they could be, making much open to interpretation for the reader. Yet, if you pay attention to things that do not seem important at first, and take your time reading (not to mention be comfortable and do not have many distractions) […]

Which is worse: colorism and classism or ghosts?

The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas

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If you search for this book online the first sentence you will read from nearly every review is “Mexican Gothic meets Rebecca” (and now this review maintains that pattern). Truthfully this is the best summary that one can give. Now, I didn’t like Mexican Gothic all that much, but I enjoyed the film version of Rebecca immensely, so I was a little wary of this going in. However, The Hacienda Isabel Cañas is enjoyable. I listened to this book as an audiobook, and the voice cast did a great job. Beatriz […]

Too Much and Never Enough

The Countess Conspiracy by Courtney Milan

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CBR15passport recommended I know the Courtney Milan fans out there love this particular book (shoutout to Malin and Narfna) in the Brothers Sinister series and having now read it, I get it. It really is a fantastic novel with characters that I love and an historical set up that resonates still today. The Countess Conspiracy deals with matters of work/family, what “women’s work” is, and that feeling when you are both too much for people and still not enough no matter what you do. The […]



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