Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Maybe it wasn’t about the moving to new places, but about the challenge of staying put.”

The Leavers by Lisa Ko

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This felt like two separate books to me, and one of them I liked much better than the other. The two central characters in this novel are Deming Guo and his mother, Polly, who is a Chinese immigrant (undocumented) from the city of Fuzhou, now living in New York (I loved the specificity of Deming and Polly insisting they speak Fuzhounese, which is a dialect of Min Chinese; this book had great cultural and historical detail like this all throughout). The first third of the […]

“That was the thing about lies: they demanded commitment.”

Miracle Creek by Angie Kim

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I really liked this. I didn’t want to read it for the longest time, because I thought it was lit-fic (and it sort of was), but when I heard it was a courtroom drama/mystery, I immediately bought it. The premise also sounded like something pretty unique, and I wanted to see what the author could do with it. The Yoo family are immigrants from Korea, and run a business called Miracle Submarine in the small town of Miracle Creek. The sub in question is actually […]

Not for me. #CBRBingo – Debut

Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore

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This was the first book in a while that my book club didn’t really agree on. We were split down the middle, actually. (I’m glad we’re still doing book club by Zoom but I miss hanging out with my people in person, and I miss all the yummy food. I know everyone misses everyone and everything right now, but I wanted to say it anyway.) If you can’t tell by my rating, I was more on the dislike side of it, though I didn’t hate […]

Ironically titling this review ‘A Good Book’.

A Good Neighborhood by Therese Anne Fowler

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This is one of those books that the more it sits with you, the worse you think of it. And I liked the book at first! It’s written in an engaging style, and the characters seem likable at first. It’s also not a long book, so it doesn’t feel like a burden to pick up. I got it as my April pick for Book of the Month, a particularly slim month for interesting choices, so I thought I would branch out a little from my […]

Cannonballing with Emily St. John Mandel.

The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

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Well, really, I should have expected this. I knew this book would be incredibly well-written (it was), and that I often have a bad reaction to lit-fic, but I figured her talent would get me through. And that was true, but this really did not speak to me the way that Station Eleven did. Despite that book being about what happens after the end of the world, that book is full of hope for humanity, and while it has elements of heartbreaking sadness, they’re tempered […]

“I was more afraid of the truth than the lie. The truth would change the circumstances of my life. The lie was static. The lie was peaceful. I was happy with the lie.”

Long Bright River by Liz Moore

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It’s always an interesting time when authors who write literary fiction decide to play in genre sandboxes (note: literary fiction is also a genre, and not one with more merit than any other, just so we’re clear on my position here). The Unseen World, the author’s previous book, is one of my favorite books I’ve read in the last several years. I liked it so much that I put all of the author’s published work on my TBR (which I have of course since ignored). […]



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