Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

More Women Getting Justice

Silenced by Ann Claycomb

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I am struggling to write this review. This book was good and I enjoyed it and I absolutely recommend it. Let’s just put that upfront. A solid almost four-star read. Like, a 3.85. Really. So why do I want to complain about it? I guess it’s because it is another entry in my new favorite subgenre – post-#metoo feminist fiction with a magical realism or fairy tale bent – but it just isn’t quite as excellent as other books I’ve read recently. It mostly suffers […]

All the Rage

When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill

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I’ve been sitting here staring at a blank screen, trying desperately to figure out the words to convey the depth and urgency of my love for this book. Let’s start with: if I have anything to be grateful to the former occupier of the White House for, it is the uptick in feminist rage literature. I suppose credit where credit is due. Because we’ve been mad, I’ve been angry my whole damn life, but it’s just now I’m finding books that mirror my own simmering […]

Not every story leaves the teller unharmed

A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes

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“The bards all sing of the bravery of the heroes and the greatness of your deeds: it is one of the few elements on which they all agree. But no one sings of the courage required by those of us who were left behind.” ― Natalie Haynes, A Thousand Ships The more I read, the more I write, and the more I consume all forms of storytelling from films, to TV, to poetry, the more I realize how unfamiliar I am with the bases for […]

“There is more than one kind of freedom. . . . Freedom to and freedom from.”

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

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I’ve had The Handmaid’s Tale on my shelf for many months now, but I’ve been avoiding starting it. I wanted to read it, but I felt like I had to be in a certain (untroubled) emotional state to face it, and that’s been a tall order these past couple of years. I recently braced myself and got down to business. Of course I already knew the premise: In the near-future, after the U.S. government has been overthrown and replaced by a patriarchal, Cristhian theonomy, women […]

A satisfying heroine; not Sherlock Holmes

A Study in Scarlet Women by Sherry Thomas

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CBR12 BINGO: Red A Study in Scarlet Women has been on my radar since last year’s “Classics and Retellings” book club, when a number of Cannonballers reviewed it as an adaptation/retelling of Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous work. I was excited that CBR12 BINGO gave me an excuse to pick it up from my library. My enthusiasm arc for this novel can be visualized as a bell curve: I went from “hmm, ok but. . .,” to “wow, this is great!” back down to “mildly positive” […]

Cerebral and unapologetically feminist.

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Taking myself as a reader out of the “ratings game” for a moment, The Blazing World deserves five stars for its ambition, passion, ferocity, and intelligence. It’s a complex book about a complex woman who is consistently undermined and undervalued (probably because she is a woman, and certainly because she’s an older one), and who vows to expose to the world the bias and hypocrisy of those who do so. It’s told after her death through a series of her journal entries, along with written […]



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