Literature – Cannonball Read 17

Vampire-Off During a Cat and Mouse Chase, but it’s cozy cute

The Night-Time Cat and the Plump Grey Mouse: A Trinity College Tale by Erika McGann, Lauren O'Neil

November 30, 2024 by CoffeeShopReader Leave a Comment

The Night-Time Cat and the Plump Grey Mouse: A Trinity College Tale is an illustrated kids book, but it’s actually got a good bit of interest for grown-ups of certain interests. The story itself is basically that Pangur Ban the cat escapes from the book where she lives to chase a mouse who has done the same (escaped the book for nightly wandering/adventure. She keeps running into the local ghosts, both literary and historical, and asks everyone if they’ve seen her prey (hint: they either […]

Few things as fun as a good book or two

O.K. Is Gay: A Picture Book by Vincent X. Kirsch

Here Is a Book: A Picture Book by Elisha Cooper

November 22, 2024 by BlackRaven Leave a Comment

There are few things as fun as a good book. Two of those books were found recently by me via online reader copies. The first by Vincent X. Kirsch is a contemporary story on how it is okay to be gay. And the other is a book about books. Or more accurately how a book goes from idea to your hands. I was a little skeptical about O.K. Is Gay: A Picture Book as it was mostly starting out as “just another it’s okay to […]

“I want – I want – I want – was all that she could think about – but just what this real want was she did not know.”

Carson McCullers: A Life by Mary V. Dearborn

October 20, 2024 by Pooja Leave a Comment

CBR16 Bingo: Pride – McCullers and many people in her life were queer, one of the main struggles of her life was trying to come to terms with and better understand that queer identity, which also infused her writing. Carson McCullers is one of the most acclaimed authors of the Southern Gothic genre, but she was also a complicated woman with a messy personal life who constantly strove toward goals that, though she did not reach always reach them, created beautiful things along the way. […]

Don’t Mean to Spy

Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner

September 24, 2024 by Jake Leave a Comment

I’ve tried Rachel Kushner’s books before but they’re a little over my head. However, I’m on a spy kick and it just so happens that her new one is a critically acclaimed spy novel and, while knowing it would still be different from the usual pulpy thrill of typical espionage fare, I decided to try it. The cool thing about writing espionage is that we all desire to lead secret lives and espionage fiction allows us to explore that. The sad necessity of hiding human […]

“Don’t stop beginning. Begin and begin and begin. Begin endlessly—that is, without the taint of even eventual ending.”

All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess by Becca Rothfeld

September 17, 2024 by Pooja Leave a Comment

Literary critic Becca Rothfeld argues against the modern inclination toward minimalism, and insteads advocates embracing all the messy and irrepressible things that make the human existence so rewarding. I am this book’s target audience, because like Rothfeld I wonder if in the process of streamlining our world we have reached an unpleasantly bland and bloodless zeitgeist. I enjoy colorful and unusual clothes and furniture. I find the aesthetic of minimalism boring. I love the over the top pulp literature of yesteryears. I don’t want the […]

A Prison of a Book

The Curse of the Marquis de Sade by Joel Warner

July 30, 2024 by Pooja Leave a Comment

CBR16 Bingo: Scandal – The Marquis de Sade lived about every year of his life scandalously, and there’s plenty of scandal that follows around the scroll and Aristophil as well. The Marquis de Sade is a divisive figure in literature, with as many people arguing for him being a visionary as there are for him being a mere maniac. But less known is the complicated journey of the manuscript of his best-known work The 120 Days of Sodom and how it came to be involved in a […]

Zirza on A Gothic Classic for a ReasonIt's one of those wish-you-could-read-it-again-for-the-first-time books. I loved it.
Emmalita on “It came to something when you found yourself hoping that the footsteps you heard were ghosts.”I loved the ending! I don’t think it’s been out long enough to talk about why though.
Dixie on Track Her Down by Melinda LeighI am just starting Track Her Down and I have read them all in order till now and thought I...
Roland of Gilead on How can you give us the gift of a crazy character named Rando Thoughtful and then just as suddenly take that gift away? We need to talk, Uncle Stevie.I came across this randomly years after it was written because I was searching "Random Thoughtful. But I have the...
Emmalita on “Only you, Em, would refer to heartbreak as a distraction. I think I would have a more sympathetic response if I asked to marry a bookcase.”Oh my goodness, Gallifrey was beautiful. I’m sure her mittens were gloriously murdery.

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