Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“you girl and you boy and that’s fine with me, but what’s not fine is you selling yourself short”

Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead

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Jonny is an open wound: raw, glistening, spilling over, and beautiful in a way that makes you unable to turn away even though you should. It’s a wound sustained from getting too drunk at a casino and crashing through a plate glass window. It glitters, it throbs, and it is going to be expensive to clean up. He invites us into his life like a tornado introduces itself to a neighborhood. We crash through, turning everything on end at a break-neck pace. Jonny is the […]

what happens to the torch-bearers, the candle holders, the vigil keepers?

The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai

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There is so much that I want to tell you about this book, but I won’t. I took so many notes, and placed so many scraps of paper between pages, but I do not want to ruin a single realization for you. Rebecca Makkai has crafted an intricately woven tapestry that you have to witness in its full glory; I do not want to give you a magnifying glass before you have had a chance to first witness the enormity of the project. The Great Believers hits […]

wikipedia with a wink

Queer City: Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day by Peter Ackroyd

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Peter Ackroyd loves London. He has written novels, histories, poetry, and biographies of the people, places, and things that make (or have made) London, well, London. He approaches history with curiosity, wonder, and with an almost obsessive eye for detail. He criticizes when criticism is needed, and he allows facts and stories to breath and speak on their own without editorializing. Queer City, his history of gay life in London from the original founders through the current citizens, reaches far back into the history of […]

“It is very important to approach all unpleasant tasks in life as a performance art piece, especially if you are a teenager.”

Things to Do When You're Goth in the Country & Other Stories by Chavisa Woods

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Goth or not, country or not, if you have ever been a teenager then SOMETHING in this collection of stories will speak to you. Maybe you’ve never befriended a drug addict squatting in a mausoleum, and maybe you’ve never had a bad trip at a MENSA party hosted by your girlfriend’s parents, but there are definitely some teenage feelings rolling dark and deep in all of us! Chavis Woods has labeled and celebrated that feeling of “something more”; most notably in the titular story, “Things […]

cbr12bingo – Green (and another Bingo!)

Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey

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I wanted so much more from this little dusty sketch of the dystopian west. It had a helluva hook – outlaw lesbians! Gun-slinging sisters-in-resistance! Non-binary action heroes! Unfortunately, it ground to a halt far short of its potential destination. It begins as all westerns do: someone hanging taut at the end of a rope. There are western tropes a-plenty; rough-riding, chaw-spitting, howdy pardnering, thankya kindly ma’ams litter the landscape. This wild west is wild for a different reason, though: we’re in a thinly plotted dystopia. […]

cbr12bingo – Cannonballer Says

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

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Y’all really got me with this one! Bothari43 first grabbed my attention with an excellent review/cat pic combo, then Bea Pants increased my interest with promises of broad swords and dirty magazines. I don’t usually read much Science Fiction/Fantasy, but after the surprise hits of new favorite Becky Chambers (whom I would not have found without the help of Cannonball), I decided to give it a go! I was wary at first of the breakdown of Houses; I am often scared off by complex mythologies, […]



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