Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Clean hearts and clean minds, cleanliness at all times! Nothing dirty, nothing bad, always happy, never sad!”

Mister Magic by Kiersten White

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I continue to be baffled by the hAtReD for this author’s last adult book, Hide, which I thought was perfectly fine and a good time. But I’m not going to go out of my way to defend it. I didn’t like it that much. But I will defend this one loudly! Luckily, I think overall it is getting better reviews, but still not as good as I think it deserves. First of all, I think it was a mistake (not sure if the author’s or […]

“I’m still going to move them out of my wanigan, but I’ll give you odds two-to-one that after they move out there’s going to be spontaneous combustion.”

Pilgrim's Wilderness: A True Story of Faith and Madness on the Alaska Frontier by Tom Kizzia

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The Pilgrim family seems to be a lovable, if eccentric addition to the town of McCarthy, Alaska, and soon win many supporters for their battle for landowner rights with the National Park Service. But the head of the clan is keeping some secrets, and the family’s lifestyle is not as idyllic as it seems. Having lived in bustling cities all my life, life in remote Alaska has always sounded surreal to me – and so I’ve often thought about how it would go if I […]

What I feel is relief. It wasn’t me.

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Welp, I just picked up The Handmaid’s Tale this afternoon, and finished it in one sitting. Not because I couldn’t put it down, but because I absolutely refused to stop, let it percolate, and dare to wonder at what could be coming. Honestly, it’s too believable. I knew that it would be; you can’t avoid talk of the story these days. But it’s strikingly real, and for that reason, downright horrifying. I never caught myself picking apart the believability, or the potential. This is dystopian fiction […]

Religion makes some people kinda cray cray.

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I had wanted to read Under the Banner of Heaven for quite a long time, and finally found a copy at my local used book store this year. I started and stopped reading several times, to pick up lighter, less gruesome novels, but I kept coming back to read this intense, true-crime novel, that is less about the horrible murder of a 24 year old mother and her 15 month old daughter (and it was violently and insanely horrible), as it is about a fundamentalist […]

The More the Merrier….

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I am an unabashed fan of Jon Krakauer so I was excited when this book became available at my library. Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith is the story of the Lafferty brothers and the heinous murders they committed in 1984. The Lafferty brothers were Fundamentalist Mormons. They practiced polygamy and communicated directly with God via “revelations.” In 1984, they brutally murder Brenda Lafferty and her 15-month old daughter. Brenda was their sister-in-law and her daughter, their niece. Ron and Dan […]



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