Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“They were the minorities of this world whose only recourse was to join this universal orchestra, in which all there was to do was cry and wail.”

An Orchestra of Minorities by Chigozie Obioma

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CBR12 BINGO: UnCannon BINGO: UnCannon, Nostalgia, Yellow, Happy, Repeat The description for the “UnCannon” category in CBR12 Bingo advises the reader to “Challenge yourself as much as you are able.” So while I could have picked up any book by a female author (of which there are many on my TBR list) to satisfy this category, I chose to read something by 34-year-old Nigerian author Chigozie Obioma. My husband read An Orchestra of Minorities last year and raved about it, so I decided now would […]

Opportunity walks into a bar

The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

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I so loved Station Eleven when I read it earlier this year that I couldn’t wait to get my hands on a copy of Emily St. John Mandel’s latest novel. I wasn’t disappointed; yet, The Glass Hotel is so like and at the same time so unlike Mandel’s previous novel that I’m not sure where to begin. While I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as Station Eleven, I’m giving it 5 stars because (once again) the writing is so damn beautiful that it transports me. […]

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 […]

It’s kind of a lot (but that’s ok)

The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell

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I liked this, but at the same time, I’m experiencing a potentially problematic personal issue where I’m getting pretty fatigued by multi-POV “but like, how are they all connected, man?” stories. Which is (reductively) David Mitchell’s main wheelhouse. Sorry Dave! The problem is that, inevitably, there are some stories/sections I care about a lot, and others where I don’t quite connect to the character and with their relation to the greater plot. This was definitely the case with Cloud Atlas, the only other Mitchell book […]

CBR11 #5: The Darkness on the Edge of Town

You Might Forget The Sky Was Ever Blue by Michael Chin

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First of all, I have to admit that this review is probably going to be a little biased because the author happens to be a friend of mine. I’ve known Mike for twenty-three years (Jesus, really?) since I was fourteen. We went to nerd camp together — a total of nine weeks over the course of three years. We took writing classes together and wrote letters during the off-season (yes letters! On paper!) A character in his first published work was based on and named […]

He was so unknown, he was still all possibility, unopened cupboards and drawers

The Folding Star by Alan Hollinghurst

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I had a discussion with Classic a few weeks ago in the comments section of her review for The Paying Guests, which she said started off very slowly. At the time, I happened to be about 100 pages into Alan Hollinghurst’s The Folding Star, and I’d been worrying about how slowly it was moving until I thought back to the same time last year when I read his most recent novel, The Sparsholt Affair, which didn’t really click for me until the last 50 pages. […]



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