Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“…it is sad, of course, to forget. But it is a lonely thing to be forgotten.”

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

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This novel is about one life lived over the course of 300 years. Adeline LaRue (Addie) was born at the end of the 17th century in a little village called Villon-sur-Sarthe, but she is still alive in New York City in 2014. This novel is about Addie’s fateful deal with a mysterious dark force and the consequences that follow. It’s a novel about independence, love, death, sacrifice, memory, and the muse that inspires art. As a child, Addie was close to her father and to […]

What is the meaning of death?

Martyr! A Novel by Kaveh Akbar

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The main character of Martyr! is Cyrus Shams, a thirty year old Iranian American living in a small university town in Indiana. Cyrus is an alcoholic, a drug abuser, and a poet, and he is obsessed with martyrdom. More precisely, he wants to know how to have a good death, a death that means something. This quest is rooted in his past and his family tragedies, but his search for enlightenment will propel him foreword into startling territory.  Cyrus Shams was born in Iran in […]

Book people are the best people!

The Door-To-Door Bookstore: A Novel by Carsten Henn

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This charming novel was a local bookstore’s pick for its monthly book club. The bookstore, which I have mentioned in previous reviews, is the Cincinnati Book Bus, which is a non-profit bookstore. They raise money to get books into schools and young readers’ hands, and during the summer months, they have a book bus that takes its wares on the road. The Door-To-Door Bookstore is a perfect choice for their book club, as it is a German novel (translation by Melody Shaw) about an old […]

“This modern love breaks me”

Blue Sisters (2024) by Coco Mellors

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Blue Sisters is about four sisters–except Nicky, the youngest, is dead, and Avery (the eldest organised lawyer one), Lucky (the beautiful model and self-destructive drug-addled party girl), and Bonnie (the sporty one), are flailing, a year on. There is some nuance here–Avery is a former heroin addict about to blow her perfect marriage and house in Hampstead Heath apart; Lucky plays guitar. Bonnie, most intriguingly, is a boxer, and Mellors’s descriptions of her physicality are some of the best passages in the novel: Your knuckles, […]

A Week for Pop Culture Exploration of Fascist Themes

Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins

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My library reservation for Suzanne Collins’ Sunrise on the Reaping, the lastest book in her Hunger Games collection, finally came in two days after I finished watching the remarkable second season of Andor. I have really enjoyed and thought about Collins’ novels over the years, so I knew what I was getting into, but that was a weighty few days of pop culture consumption. Sunrise on the Reaping takes the reader back to the 50th Hunger Games, the Quarter Quell we first heard about in […]

I’ve got mixed feelings about this one

Lessons in Chemistry: A Novel by Bonnie Garmus

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Lessons in Chemistry is a novel of extremes. It details horrible loss and heartbreak, but it also delivers moments of humor. Its main female character suffers misogyny, abuse, and  debasement, but she also finds the courage to fight back tirelessly and valiantly not just for herself but for others. It’s generally an enjoyable read, but my overall impression is that it was rather fantastical. Despite every bad thing in the world happening, somehow our unlikely downtrodden protagonist perseveres. Nothing wrong with that, but given that […]



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