Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Do with their death bury their parents’ strife

Brickmakers by Selva Almada

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Chins slightly raised. Eyes locking on eyes. The rest hardly matters: an afternoon of scalding sun, a cloudy night, the middle of a dance hall, the soccer field in the pink evening light, some street in the center of town. Meanwhile, the music is always the same: the panting, the sound of fists, the cracking of knuckles before they land the first blow, the hiss of saliva, the occasional groan when a jab lands right in the liver, and the guys egging them on, always […]

Life is the thing you bring with you inside your own head

Normal People by Sally Rooney

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“He was like a freezer item that had thawed too quickly on the outside and was melting everywhere, while the inside was still frozen solid. Somehow he was expressing more emotion than at any time in his life before, while simultaneously feeling less, feeling nothing.” ― Sally Rooney, Normal People CBR15Bingo: Adulthood CBR15Passport: Books from different countries Connell and Marianne grow up together in the same small town in Ireland. Connell is the nerd and jock who hangs out with the wealthier, more popular kids. […]

My first Nora Roberts

Dance Upon the Air by Nora Roberts

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I’ve been collecting Nora Roberts’s novels for a few years. My first acquisition was Dance Upon the Air, the first in the Three Sisters Island trilogy. As a lover of romance and witchy protagonists, I knew I’d love it. We meet Nell as she moves to the Three Sisters island. She isn’t sure how she ended up here. It’s almost like she was drawn to the place. The book toys whether this was magic or coincidence. All she wants is a fresh start after a mysterious […]

“No matter what any woman said, culture could not be escaped. Even if it meant tragedy. Even if it meant death.”

A Woman Is No Man by Etaf Rum

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Rum’s heartbreaking debut is a generational story about three Palestinian-American women struggling to find their place within their family, balancing their culture with the new pressures and freedom of America. We have three main POV charactersIsra is born and raised in Palestine, and after her arranged marriage at 17, moves to live with her husband’s family to Brooklyn. Isra dreams of finding a love like the one she’s read about in books. Deya is Isra’s oldest daughter, who dreams of going to college instead of […]

This metaphor is a metaphor for my metaphor.

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

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This is a really tough one for me to review, and not because of the subject matter. I wasn’t drawn to this one on my own, but picked it up because one of my real life book clubs chose it for January. I did the audio because it was available on SCRIBD, a service I already pay for, and I didn’t have time to do the hard copy with my already packed January TBR. This turned out to be a mistake, I think, though not […]

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad…House

It Will Just Be Us by Jo Kaplan

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A knock at the door. A series of frantic knocks at the door. Yes, It Will Just Be Us  nearly starts with “it was a dark and stormy night”. Our narrator, Sam, is a down-and-out adjunct professor of archeology barely hanging onto her sanity. After a series of upsetting events, we find her moving back to her crumbling, ancestral mansion in on the edge of a foreboding Virginia swamp. The mansion is, for all intents and purposes, haunted. It’s haunted by the living specter of her […]



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