Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A Jamaican-inspired YA fantasy with dragons

So Let Them Burn by Kamilah Cole

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So Let Them Burn is the debut YA fantasy from Kamilah Cole. Our leads are two Afro-Caribbean sisters. They live on a small tropical island, which was inspired by Jamaica. We meet Faron who called on the gods and was blessed with power to save her country from colonial invaders on dragons. It’s been a few years since the traumatic battle. Now she is kind of a bratty teenager who uses her magic to win races against bullies. Much to the chagrin of her sister Elara […]

“Nothing makes sense until it makes sense in the body”

Self-Portrait as Othello by Jason Allen-Paisant

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National poetry month demands some poetry reviews, and fortunately there’s no shortage of good poetry to engage with. Jason Allen-Paisant won last year’s T.S. Eliot Prize for his second collection, Self-Portrait As Othello. Allen-Paisant is originally from Jamaica, but also studied in Paris and earned his PhD in medieval literature at Oxford, and his familiarity with moving through these more rarefied, majority-white spaces in Europe prompts, in part, the identification with the figure of Othello that forms the center of this collection. Self-Portrait As Othello really […]

Coming to America

 It'll Be Irie: Staying True to Yourself by Alejandra Barajas

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cbr15bingo On the Road: a young boy immigrates to America I had decided that I did not want to read It’ll Be Irie: Staying True to Yourself by Alejandra Barajas for no other reason than I had read a lot of being yourself type of books and one more was going to be one too many. I then found a physical reader copy and since I prefer reading books that way, I thought I would give it a shot. I am glad I waited for it […]

A Brief History? Worth Every One of the 686 Pages.

A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James

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As I descend further into dad-hood, I find myself being more patient for longer books and movies. I mean, I recently sat through 3:15 of Barry Lyndon and loved almost every minute of it. So I figured it was finally time to tackle this one, a book which I must’ve started three or four times only to put off due to its length and a lack of patience trying to understand the Jamaican patois. Better late than never ’cause this book is great. I’m finding more and […]

Two Duds

The Wounded and the Slain by David Goodis

Doctor Lovebeads by Gary Reilly

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How much does it suck when you read two books concurrent with one another by authors you normally like…and they turn out to be complete duds? I took time to write this review after finishing both books to wonder if it was just me. Nope. Both were not good and very close to bad. The Wounded and the Slain There are good ideas in this David Goodis noir tale: ideas about marriage, accountability, colonialism, loss, sense of place and justice. But they’re buried underneath Goodis’ […]

A Long, Violent Look at the Not-So-Distant Past

A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James

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Verdict: A rewarding read, but definitely not for everyone. Review: Its hard to know where to start with a review, as this book was a LOT: a lot of book awards (including the Booker), a lot of characters, a lot of narrators, a lot of violence (way more than 7 killings), a lot of the CIA messing around in 3rd world countries, and a whole lot of pages (almost 700!).  Moreover, that ‘a lot’ hits you right away, kicking off with a 4 page cast […]



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