Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Sad books that help make it better

The Fabric of Us by Aditi Anand

Where Are You, Eddie? A Companion to Michael Rosen's Sad Book by Michael Rosen and Gill Smith

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This is a review that seems like another review about a book I almost didn’t write up, but it is not really. Oh, yes, I almost did not write up The Fabric of Us by Aditi Anand (due later May 2026; read via an online reader copy) because I could not think of enough words for a full review. At least not by itself. It was only when I read  Where Are You, Eddie? A Companion to Michael Rosen’s Sad Book by Michael Rosen and […]

If this is the third volume of poetry, wonder what the rest is like

Life in the Past Lane by Peter Carlaftes

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I had an online reader link to Awe and Other Words Like Wow: Poem by Kat Georges. I was somewhat excited because I had no idea what it was going to be like. I had little description and since it was one of my older saved links, I had forgotten why I had saved it in the first place. I only knew it was poetry because it said Poem. I clicked on the Click Here to Read Button and this image of a gray hair (I assumed) […]

A totally different book than I normally read

The Direction of the Wind by Mansi Shah

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I don’t remember how I found this book, but it’s totally not my style. Nobody gets murdered. I was going to say there aren’t even any missing persons or mysteries to solve, but that’s totally not true. I guess it had the undertones of “my style” of book and I didn’t even realize it. We start out with Sophie mourning the loss of her father, who just recently passed away. She’s helping her aunts clean out the house, and she finds some old letters hidden […]

Grief As A Creative Force

Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova

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I honestly don’t remember where I first heard about this book – Instagram? One of the dozens of bookish emails I seem to get every single day? Maybe just scrolling through the Libby app? However it came into my life, I am really glad it did. This one is about Magos and Joseph and their son, Santiago, who has just died when the book opens. He was born with only one lung, and after his body finally gives out, Magos, in her grief, removes a […]

Heartbreaking work on staggering loss

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

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Joan Didion passed away in late December, 2021, which made the beginning of 2022 feel like the right time to read arguably her most famous book, The Year of Magical Thinking. The Year of Magical Thinking is a memoir on grief. On December 30, 2003, Didion and her husband, John Dunne, returned home from visiting their daughter, Quintana, in the hospital, where she was suffering from severe pneumonia. They fell into their usual evening pattern- starting the fire, making dinner- when John had a heart […]

The Three S-s: spooky, sad, and a little bit sexy

The Wild Hunt by Emma Seckel

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Honestly, what else could you need? If you are our Heroine Leigh Wells, you need quite a bit. You’ve been called back to your ancestral island home, far flung from the wild shores of Scotland. World War Two did not hit your home directly, but it stole many young men and sent very few back home. The few that returned are not who they once were. The island is not what it once was. The Sluagh (sloo-ah) still return every October, but every year they […]



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