Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“A small creature swallowed whole by a monster…”

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

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“Horror,” Laura Miller says in the introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of The Haunting of Hill House, “turns on the dissolution of boundaries […] between the outside of the body and everything that ought to stay inside.” Maybe the way horror lurks in liminal spaces, only rarely coming right out in the open, has something to do with how much I enjoy the genre. And The Haunting of Hill House serves masterfully as our guide to those cracked and uncertain places.  

Fun discovering new authors

Heroes and Villains by Lewis Shiner

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I love discovering new authors. A few months ago, I signed up for a grab bag of books from a publisher and this was included in the pack. I saved it until the end, as I was unfamiliar with the author, now I wish I would have moved it towards the top of the queue. Heroes and Villains is a collection of 4 short stories, all dealing with clear protagonists and adversaries. In some ways it reads like a classic comic book (and I mean […]

Apologies to whoever sat next to me while I read this

The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins

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The Library at Mount Char is a strange book. Sometimes it’s really interesting and suspenseful; other times, it’s horrific (as in horror literature, not general quality). The thing is, at least for me, is that the two don’t quite mesh together. The general story follows Caroline and Steve, who apparently has some kind of criminal past but now lives a quiet life as a plumber. He meets Caroline who seems a little off but who offers him an unusual amount of money to help her […]

Come Along and Walk With Me

Mystery Walk by Robert B. McCammon

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Well this was really good! I was pleasantly surprised since I have only really loved one of McCammon’s books, “Boy’s LIfe.” “Mystery Walk” brought back some of that feeling of magical realism along with horror that I liked in the previous book. We also get introduced to some pretty epic characters (Billy Creekmore and his mother) and I ended up wanting to read more about Billy after the conclusion of the book. “Mystery Walk” begins with a pregnant Ramona Creekmore who has a gift. She […]

Lovecraft, Racism and Disaapointment

Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff

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I went into this book thinking I would love it. Hoping I would love it. After all, I am a huge Lovecraft fan, in spite of all of the underlying concerns with his tales (for all of his racist and anti-Semitic tropes, as well as a prose so purple it could be smoke on the water, he does present some incredible ideas in his stories). The thought of taking a Lovecraftian universe and exploring it through the eyes of people of color in the 1950s […]

“The colonizer writes the history, winning twice: A theft of land. A theft of witness.”

Before the Devil Breaks You by Libba Bray

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In this third installment of Bray’s fantastic Diviners series, Libba Bray finally pulls together many moving pieces and lays down the major themes of the series with gusto. If I could sum it up in one phrase, I’d call this book “Ghosts are scary, but not as scary as evangelism” Or “Ghosts are scary, but it’s your fault.” The Diviners are a diverse group of supernaturally talented young people in 1920s NYC (who aren’t officially called “The Diviners” but simply “diviners” at this point).  In […]



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