Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

If you haven’t caused a scene in a psych unit, it’s just because you haven’t been inside long enough.

The Devil in Silver by Victor LaValle

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The titular devil in LaValle’s The Devil in Silver comes in many forms. Its most obvious is the monster that roams the halls of the New Hyde psychiatric ward at night, attacking patients who leave their doors unlocked. When Pepper is committed against his will after committing a crime he doesn’t fully remember, he quickly comes face to face with this evil. Along with some of his companions on the ward, he sets out to solve the mystery of this hushed up resident of the […]

“Remember, never take no cut-offs and hurry along as fast as you can”

The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party by Daniel James Brown

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The Indifferent Stars Above is the gripping tale of the Donner Party who in 1846 set off from their homes in the east of the United States of America to travel overland to California, only to discover that the ‘shortcut’ they’d been promised was no such thing, leaving them to flounder in a hostile landscape as winter set in. As the months passed and with no thaw in sight, a small number of the party would attempt to reach civilisation and get help, leaving the […]

Book Takes Too Long To Get to the Point

Recursion by Blake Crouch

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So at this point I cannot give this one more than three stars. The main reason is that I disliked a good 50 percent of this book. I kept going with it hoping it would pay off, but it took too long to get there. I think dividing up the POVs is what made it confusing. I get why Crouch did it (to make the reveal cooler) but geez it took forever and I was so confused I went back to the beginning to make […]

Reproductive Freedom and the Apocalypse

The Book of the Unnamed Midwife by Meg Elison

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  Content warning: sexual violence, stillbirth A worldwide plague kills nearly everyone on the planet. A midwife wakes in a San Francisco hotel. (It’s practically “28 Days Later.”) She stocks up on antibiotics—and, critically, birth control—and walks into an extra-hellish hellscape. Since females experienced the highest mortality rate, the rare woman or girl that survives is a treasure. Commodity. Object. The midwife trains herself to be self-sufficient. She carries a gun. However, the key to her survival is her avoidance of other people—that is, men. […]

Not my wheelhouse, but it could be (Bingo #2)

Carrie by Stephen King

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Cbr11bingo Not my wheelhouse I don’t like being scared. Never have. When I was a kid, I had to leave the room if a commercial for a scary movie or show came on. I never wanted to go to haunted houses at Halloween, and I would avoid trick or treating at houses where it looked like someone was going to try to scare me. A few cannonballs ago, I reviewed Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which is a dark story but […]

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 […]



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