Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Sorry, guys, this just wasn’t for me

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

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I was excited when I saw this in one of my local little free libraries, because I remembered seeing several very positive reviews on CBR. Sometimes, though, things just don’t work out. On paper, it sounded great: love story between enemies; strong women kicking ass in battle; time travel triggering alternate histories. I wanted to love this. The execution just didn’t work for me. Red and Blue are agents in opposite sides of a war. Red’s side, “the Agency,” is a technotopia, and Blue’s side, […]

You know when it’s not the book’s fault you didn’t like it, you just read it at the wrong time?

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

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I read On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous as a book club pick during the dead time between Christmas and New Year’s, and resented it the whole time for not being a lightweight romance or cozy mystery. If I had read it in deep February, I might have loved it. On Earth is a novel about inherited childhood trauma written as a letter by the narrator, Little Dog, to his mother, who will never read it. It jumps from events before his birth – the devastating […]

I made you a tape of a great album by a British Band called ABC

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I can’t tell if this novel is really good or if it just hit all my nostalgia buttons—hit them hard.  First of all, this young adult novel is a novel of letters—actual letters—not e-mails or texts or Instagram photos—between Cath and Scott.  This made me think of all the letters I wrote when I went off to college—to friends back home and later, during the summer, to friends I had made at school.  These letters were written on stationary of various kinds as well as […]

Read Richard Russo’s Straight Man and then Have this Book for Dessert

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I can’t remember the last epistolary novel I read though one of my claims to fame (if you can call it that) is having plowed through to the end of the unabridged edition of Clarissa in my undergraduate 18th century novel class—something I don’t recommend. That particular novel of letters resembled a phone book, so in contrast, Dear Committee Members is refreshingly brief—almost too brief. I would have happily read more. Though readers from any occupation might find this book funny, I think it will […]



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