Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Her Body and Other Parties

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

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So, I picked this us like…three years ago?  And the first three stories were SO MUCH, that I put it down, and then it sat on my “currently reading” list for a long time, and finally I thought, let’s just do it.  It’s October!  Time for some creepy short stories. These are creepy, but not quite horror.  They are visceral, gothic-adjacent.  Machado’s style is so abrupt and beautiful and precise, but precise like someone is describing something that you can’t quite see, until you see […]

Party Down

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

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This is a great short story collection. I found it randomly in my local used book store and since picking it up I’ve seen in on all kinds of “best of” lists, which is great, because this book is great. As with most short story collections I pick up I read it over a bit of time and not all in one go. I like to use short story collections as palate cleansers while reading other books, so it’ll take me a while to finish […]

I Don’t Know What to Say

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

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This book floored me the other day. First off, thanks to Pajiba for highlighting this book in it’s best of the bunch year for 2018. The Best and Worst of Cannonball 10 article had this book as the best by Mrs. Smith Reads. It looked interesting based on her description, “Carmen Maria Machado’s collection of short stories is nothing short of perfection, and brings everything I was looking for in a year of reading mostly feminist, female-identified, and woman-positive fiction writers.” That sounded right up my alley […]

“I took a step toward her. ‘It is my right to reside in my own mind. It is my right,’ I said.” (CBR11Bingo)

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

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Her Body and Other Parties is all about expectations – both the ones on the page for the characters Machado created and for the reader as they come to the much hyped but little described work. I knew going in that the book was pushing boundaries, igniting conversations (the husband stitch, for example), and refused to stick to one genre at any given time, let alone for the entire collection. Having completed the book I understand why reviewers have, one the whole, been relatively mute […]

I can already say this will be my favourite of 2018.

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I’ve read a lot of good books this year, but I feel confident that Her Body and Other Parties will be my favourite read of 2018. Carmen Maria Machado’s collection of short stories is nothing short of perfection, and brings everything I was looking for in a year of reading mostly feminist, female-identified, and woman-positive fiction writers. Every story in this collection is deliciously good, though, like many, my personal favourites are “The Husband Stitch,” “Real Women Have Bodies,” and “Eight Bites.” My least favourite was “Especially Heinous” but only because […]

Finally getting through a few story collections I have been picking at and one brand new one.

American Gothic Tales; American Supernatural Tales; Her Body and Other Parties; Honeydew by Joyce Carol Oates; ST Joshi; Carmen Maria Machado; Edith Pearlman

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American Gothic Tales – Ed. Joyce Carol Oates 5/5 Stars Joyce Carol Oates knows her stuff. Her introduction to this collection her focus on the Gothic as the selection process makes this an incredibly satisfying collection because it’s not all one type of story. So while on the one had you do in fact get a bunch of ghost stories, you also get stories that are eerie or disturbing or full of murder, and you get stories that are off-putting but not directly scary stories, […]



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