Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The best short story collection I’ve read in a while!

Orange World and Other Stories by Karen Russell

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This is a collection of short stories that really works, unlike the last one I wrote about! I don’t want to include a summary of each story, but I do want to mention my favorites: I have not stopped thinking about The Gondoliers or Orange World since putting this book down two weeks ago. In The Gondoliers, 4 sisters use echolocation (!) to navigate the waters in a presumably post-climate change world. Incredible world building, amazing character study, just all around wonderful and weird. In […]

hot take scifi short stories are the highest art form, even if not every one lands 100%

Orange World and Other Stories by Karen Russell

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BINGO: Review, and with that my first EVER bingo!!!! This was a review from the always brilliant Julia, who could be argued first introduced me to the idea that books and reading could be more than just a thing that I really liked, but truly a part of my personality and how I experience joy in the world! When she recommends something, I do try my hardest to add it to the tippy top of my TBR list, although the rec for The Overstory did […]

Another Airport Transit Read

Sleep Donation: A Novella by Karen Russell

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This is another book gifted to me by andtheIToldYouSos last year. And this also turned out to be a great little novella to slip into my handbag for those times I was transiting through airports—this time to Indianapolis. Sleep deprivation is a brutal thing; unfortunately in the last few months, I’ve experienced a good deal of that. However, in Sleep Donation,  loss of sleep has become the new pandemic. In its most extreme form, it kills. However, there is a therapy that has been developed […]

Memorable but depressing

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

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I got married last year in August, but when it came to our first wedding anniversary, my husband and I weren’t exactly sure how to celebrate. When I saw that the first anniversary was paper, it occurred to me that we could read a book together! After all, some of our first discussions were about books. We went on a big trip to Florida this year, so we decided to get a book about Florida. I really like this new tradition of ours, and we’re […]

Not What I Was Expecting? Maybe?

St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves: Stories by Karen Russell

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I absolutely loved Karen Russell’s Vampires in the Lemon Grove short story collection, but was really disappointed in Swamplandia!, so when I saw she had another short story collection, I was so excited to read more of her short works. St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves was….not what I was expecting? Granted, Vampires was published in 2013, and St. Lucy’s is her first collection, published in 2006, so I may just be running into my usual issue of having read an author in reverse. But where a […]

These were 100% cover reads, but they (mostly) ended up being great!

The Tiger Came to the Mountains (The Trespass Collection, #1) by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Wildlife (The Trespass Collection, #2) by Jeff VanderMeer

The Backbone of the World (The Trespass Collection, #3) by Stephen Graham Jones

Stag (The Trespass Collection, #4) by Karen Russell

A Righteous Man (The Trespass Collection, #5) by Tochi Onyebuchi

Bloody Summer (The Trespass Collection, #6) by Carmen Maria Machado

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As mentioned in this post’s title, I saw these covers and immediately went OOOOH. Click click click. Free? Okay! Also, the idea of various genres of story that deal with nature and wildlife clashing with humans appeals to me. I did four of them by audio, and all four narrators were excellent (even for the one I two-starred), and two by Kindle. If you have Prime, they are free for you. Some of them really surprised me! “Wildlife,” by Jeff VanderMeer — 2 STARS This […]



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