Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Local and the Yokel

A Great Deliverance (Inspector Lynley no.1) by Elizabeth George

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In a small town in the English countryside, the head of a well-liked local farmer is violently separated from his body. Holding the axe that facilitated the act is his daughter Roberta, sitting nearby and exclaiming her lack of regret over it all. But things don’t add up, and Scotland Yard sends inspector and eighth earl of Pudsey-Le-Stodge Thomas Lynley to crack the case. He is accompanied by bundle of nerves and 8th season Eastenders character Barbara Havers. Can Havers put aside her dislike for […]

if it feels too good to be true…

The Whispering House by Elizabeth Brooks

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THEN IT IS! RUN! Freya, our protagonist, is a willfully clueless horror heroine. Were The Whispering House a movie, we would all be shouting at her every time she was on screen. Don’t open that door! Don’t drink that tea! Don’t go up those stairs! Don’t look behind you! Don’t move in to the crumbling manor house that is somehow connected to your sister’s suicide days after meeting the charming yet off-putting man of the house! Just…DON’T! A blurb on the cover of my ARC states […]

“Fools love to declare that they don’t suffer fools.”

The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner

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Repulsive, decadent, and entitled people populate these pages and you know what? I do not care! I loved it! I loved it for all of the things that it tries to be, all of the things that it mercilessly tears apart, and all of the things that it will not and cannot be. This is a lightning rod for artists, revolutionaries, trust-fund princes, and girls next door. While this book takes place mostly in the 70s, I felt like I had been a part of […]

Missed it byyyyy thatmuch

Sweet Fruit, Sour Land by Rebecca Ley

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I know I’ve mentioned a few (hundred) times that I’m a sucker for the Man Booker Prize, and I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of those lists for many years. I’ve finally started paying more attention to others, too, particularly the Costa (formerly Whitbread) Awards and the Women’s Prize, and I also found the cheeky Not-the-Booker Prize awarded by The Guardian from a blend of votes by the public and a judging panel. I thought the 2018 winner, Rebecca Ley’s Sweet Fruit, Sour Land, […]

Everything old is new again, and I want to inhale it all

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This is the first time since The Passage that my brain has DEMANDED MORE when I’ve gotten to the end of a Book 1. I want, I want, I want. I freaking fracking loved Red Rising, and it was a huge surprise to me, because as per uzh, I had totally forgotten what the book was about by the time it was checked out to me, making it a totally shocking, harsh deep dive into an incredibly complete and consuming future dystopia. There’s a lot […]

A nostalgic visit to my early teens

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Ponyboy Curtis is an orphan. He lives with his two older brothers, Darry, who works construction and Sodapop, who dropped out of school to work in a garage to help support the family. Ponyboy and his friends are Greasers, kids with leather jackets and long, grease-slicked hair from working class backgrounds, often with a lot of trouble at home. Quite a few of the Greasers are part of gangs and having a criminal record isn’t all that uncommon. Ponyboy would much rather be a Greaser […]



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