Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

An excellent book but not my cup of tea

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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I read Gods of Jade and Shadow and thought it was enjoyable, so I was excited to read Mexican Gothic.  I’m not sure my expectations were met. Noemi is a socialite in the upper-class of 1950s Mexico City. She goes to parties, she flirts, she wears beautiful gowns because she actually enjoys them, and she wants to go university against her family’s wishes. Noemi’s life gets upended when her father asks her to go check on her cousin Catalina who has written a strange and disturbing […]

I have as many emotions inside me as there are genres in this book.

Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1) by Tamsyn Muir

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Please note that although there are no real spoilers in this review, intuitive readers/reviewers might be spoiled anyway because of the way I’m going to say some things. You have been vaguely warned! “Read Gideon the Ninth!” they said. “You’ll love it!” they said. Well, fuck you, I did! I did love it! And I’m so mad and so sad also! It’s been a long time since I let a book get to me like this, and frankly, I blame everyone. I blame the author […]

monologuing at the mouth of madness

The House on Vesper Sands by Paraic O'Donnell

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A strong opening pulls us directly into the spooky fold; a seamstress with a secret hurls herself from a very important man’s very high attic window. The House on Vesper Sands has all of the hallmarks of a Victorian throw-back; mazes of manners, decrepit mansions, and gin-soaked police populate a scuzzy world of destitute working girls, complicated family histories, and genteel young men all-aflutter. The Spiritualist movement is in full-swing and a cloaked and creepy group of “Spiriters” may be responsible for a rash of […]

A perfect late autumn read: atmospheric with a twist

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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I realized, when it came time to do my best-of lists, that I hadn’t actually written reviews for two of my favourite books this year. Mexican Gothic is one of these. I read it a few weeks after Halloween, when everything in Denmark can best be described as ‘grey’ and I was in the perfect mood for Gothic. (Plus, look at that AMAZING and GORGEOUS cover; how can you resist?) Boy, did Silvia Moreno-Garcia deliver. Mexican Gothic is the story of Noemi, a young woman […]

“She wondered, for the thousandth time, who got to decide one tradition was right and another was wrong.”

The Butchers' Blessing by Ruth Gilligan

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What makes a tradition a tradition? How and when do we pass from routine to ritual, and ritual to sacred rite? How do we decide what it kept, what is left behind, and what must be destroyed for the good of the future? Ruth Gilligan knows, but she will not give us any easy answers. Instead, she gives us snapshots; a literal photograph  sets us in motion, but glimpses into the life of “modern Ireland” connect the pieces by stringing one red knot to another. […]

Dracula sucks…but the book doesn’t!

Dracula by Bram Stoker

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Dracula sucks but the book doesn’t. I go through phases of reading classics or otherwise tackling books with reputations of being difficult. Sometimes it’s easy to see why books are classics – they’re timeless and engrossing. A Tale of Two Cities is that way for me. So is Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. Other times the classics feel like archaeological work. The reader is excavating and extrapolating. Dracula felt like work to me, but the reader can definitely appreciate the book’s influence on future work. In particular, […]



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