Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A love letter to Arthurian legend told through inclusive re-imaginings

Sword Stone Table: Old Legends, New Voices by Edited by: Swapna Krishna and Jenn Northington

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Thank you, llamareadsbooks for gifting this book to me in the CBR Book Exchange! CBR14 Bingo: “Time” – This anthology moves through time, from the ancient past to the far future. Sword Stone Table first came to my awareness through emmalita’s review.  When narfna reviewed it a few weeks ago, it prompted me to move it to the top of the read pile.  I have a deep affection for stories about King Arthur and Camelot that probably started with the Disney animated version, was strengthened by […]

There was a game he could see and another he couldn’t, and he would play them both.

Sword Stone Table: Old Legends, New Voices by Swapna Krishna and Jenn Northington

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My formative King Arthur works were the 1963 Disney movie The Sword in the Stone, and 1975’s Monty Python and the Holy Grail. When I discovered Mary Stewart’s The Crystal Cave, as a preteen, my life as a reader of fantasy and romance was set. I’m a King Arthur enthusiast, but not a purist (except for Antoine Fuqua’s 2004 King Arthur – great cast, beautiful visuals, terrible movie that should never have been marketed as “historically accurate”). Hearing that a work is a retelling of […]

“F**k you this is hilarious.”

Texts from Jane Eyre by Daniel M. Lavery

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That ^ is Roxane Gay’s entire review of the Texts from Jane Eyre on Goodreads and it cracked me right up. The book is currently rated an average of 3.61 stars out of 5, so I assume that’s what she’s referring to. Texts from Jane Eyre: And Other Conversations with Your Favourite Literary Characters (and also their authors, just so’s you know), is based on the feature of the same name (the first part of the name) from The Toast. The feature askes: if literary […]

“I often described my sudden shift in self-awareness as feeling as if a demon had entered my room in the middle of the night, startled me awake by whispering, ‘What if you were a man, sort of?’ into my ear, then slithered out the window before I could ask any follow-up questions.”

Something That May Shock and Discredit You by Daniel Mallory Ortberg

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This would honestly be five stars except for a handful of essays/interludes that were too experimental and obscure for me to get anything out of them. I’m going to keep this review short and sweet for a couple of reasons, the first being that the time for me to have said something detailed, thoughtful, and incisive about it would have been back in late April when I first finished it. That time has now long passed. The second reason being that I’m not sure I […]

“It is visceral, it is personal, it is gleeful, and it is triumphant”

Something That May Shock and Discredit You by Daniel M. Lavery

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While explaining to a group of medievalists his feelings on reading pieces that are older than a hundred years old, Daniel states ‘ I feel a profound sense of triumph and superiority over the author’ I said, ‘because they are foolish enough to be dead, while I am young and gloriously alive. Not because I think their ideas are outdated or anything like that. It has nothing to do with how they think, or how we see the world differently. It is visceral, it is […]

“why did you turn my friends into pigs i don’t know maybe the real question is why are your friends so turn-into-pigsable”

Texts from Jane Eyre: And Other Conversations with Your Favorite Literary Characters by Daniel M. Lavery

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I apologize now, but this will not be a long review. If I could get away with saying: “I laughed, a lot, read it now” I would. Because this book really is a very funny, very witty, highly sarcastic look at all of your favorite writings and writers from an absurd angle. And a joy to read. But, that is not enough to qualify as a review so off I go to attempt to explain more. I bought this book on a lark. I read […]



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