Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Spoooky

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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Counter-intuitively, this Gothic horror novel was an absolute joy to read. My attention span in 2020 is limited at best, but I could not put down Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic. Her main character, the impetuous and steel-spited Mexico City socialite Noemí Taboada, is truly alive. The rural Mexican setting is a delight, and the creepiness level is appropriate for those of us less versed in horror. Noemí Taboada is a Mexico City mover and shaker. She lives in the 1940s-50s era, and has expansive ideas […]

Slow build up to a crazy bananapants ending

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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Mexican Gothic is the story of Noemí Taboada, a 22 year old socialite in 1950s Mexico City. Noemí’s life is filled with parties, shopping, concerts, and a rotating cast of beaus. Despite having a sharp mind, no one except her father looks past her beautiful face. Noemí’s cousin Catalina married an English man named Virgil Doyle and moved to his family’s estate in the mountains the previous year. Catalina has sent Noemí’s father a disturbing letter claiming her husband is trying to poison her and […]

Damn, son. Be sure to hang on to that candelabra, though.

Malicroix by Henri Bosco

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What a wild ride.  Gothic mysticism is the best way to describe it, I guess.  Although I was unfamiliar with the French writer, he had been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times, so there’s that. The book opens in a straightforward way with a pleasant young man being summoned to the estate of his recently deceased great-uncle.  He is dropped off by carriage in a desolate expanse of fields and wetlands where he is met by a taciturn shepherd sent to escort […]

Well, that’s just your opinion, man.

The Seven Lamps of Architecture by John Ruskin

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There is no doubt at all that John Ruskin was an odd bird indeed.  But good Lord, the man had Opinions.   In 1848, Ruskin toured northern France with his bride (poor girl), and I assume, earlier Italy.  It was here that he fell in love with (certain examples) of Gothic architecture.  For Ruskin, architecture was the first of the arts, because it was not created by a person, but rather by a culture (his primary examples being cathedrals that took, in some cases, hundreds […]

familiar fables

Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins by Emma Donoghue

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Familiar stories are passed, one by one, from one storyteller to another. There are thirteen tales in Kissing the Witch; some will be immediately recognizable, some will require you to dust off your mental library, and some are fantastically new- conjured from collective memory and superstition but new none the less. Each tale is handed off from teller to teller; frequently the perceived villain will be the heroine of the following story. Most are, to quote Emmylou Harris, “full of heartbreak and desire”. She sings that […]

Apparently I Am Not Fond of Phantoms

The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

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Please note that I received this book via NetGalley. This did not affect my rating or review. I tried very hard to get through this book and was very relieved to get to the last page. I didn’t enjoy this at all and thought the melodramatic “Phantom” was awful and the love triangle between him, his love Christine and Christine’s love Raoul was a bit much for me. I have to say the main reason why I gave this 2 stars was that Leroux definitely […]



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